The Trump Effect brings thousands of new holders to memecoin MAGA — for now

If it wasn’t obvious before, it is now: Presidential favorite Donald Trump is a crypto influencer, whether he knows it or not.

Trump recently hinted at expanding his suite of NFTs with a fourth collection. The NFTs have a direct line to Trump (one collection even comes with a physical card containing a piece of his infamous “Mug Shot Suit”), having raised millions of dollars through primary sales, even though floor prices have lagged .

Those funds are apparently separate from the $3 million in crypto raised for his campaign last quarter from around 100 donors — just shy of 1% of the total contributions for the period, per WSJ .

Read more: Trump campaign begins accepting bitcoin, ether and other crypto donations

There’s also a bevy of unofficial Trump memecoins arguably more popular than the official NFTs .

MAGA is the biggest, launched mid-2023. The token, which has a market cap of $319 million, is now found in nearly 71,400 wallets split between Solana, Ethereum, BSC and Base — almost double the amount recorded in April.

Major events in Trump ’s timeline over the past year — positive or negative — have coincided with waves of new MAGA holders. The number of wallets containing MAGA jumped by 620 directly after his infamous mug shot last August, which was a lot at the time. 

When the Supreme Court ruled Trump could be added to the California ballot in early March, more than 5,500 additional addresses began holding MAGA. That’s the largest surge of new holders so far. 

(The shaded area in purple on the chart above covers Trump’s civil fraud trial, which wrapped up in January.)

Similar spikes in new holders were seen when Trump was found guilty of paying $130,000 in “hush money” to Stormy Daniels, and following the assassination attempt this past weekend.

There does seem to be a link between Trump narrative plot points and the price of MAGA (any news is good news, is good for the price of MAGA, at least in the short term).

But the price of bitcoin also seems to align with Trump stuff — bitcoin’s price hit all-time high around the time that Trump was let on the California ballot, rallied again around the end of his hush money trial, and also bounced following the botched assassination. Technical analysis would suggest that it’s mostly coincidence. And the same could go for the spike in MAGA holders, but the connection there does appear obvious.

Another hot memecoin, MOG, gained thousands of new holders as bitcoin rallied to its record high in March, same with MAGA. 

And while it wasn’t to the same degree as MAGA, the rate of new MOG holders also picked up when bitcoin sought a retest in late May.

So, who’s in charge: big fish trading on technical market indicators, or Trump, now carrying the torch for celebrity crypto influencers from cycles past like John McAfee and Elon Musk?

Probably both. But I know which answer would mean we’re in for loads more fun heading into November’s election. Let’s go with that.

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter .

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter .

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.