On January 17, 2025, Donald Trump launched his own meme coin $TRUMP. It started trading at just a few cents and within a few days reached a record high of $75.35, with a volume of over $19 billion.

Some claim that this moment, or perhaps the rise of tools like Pump.fun, marked the beginning of the boom in presidential meme coins. But there is no doubt that Trump, possibly the most influential person in the world, opened the floodgates.

Just a day later, on January 19, Melania Trump launched her own token, $MELANIA. It closely mimicked the structure of $TRUMP, but with even fewer security measures.

MELANIA was seen as a blatant attempt to make money. At launch, 82% of the supply was held in one cluster of wallets, and the pre-sale wallet holding 10% immediately dumped most of its distribution.

This was followed by President Touadera of the Central African Republic, who released $CAR, an "experiment." Then came $LIBRA, which scaled this model to much larger sizes.