Solana Hits $275 Lifetime Peak as Official Trump Memecoin Surges to $8B

Donald Trump’s official memecoin has jumpstarted fresh speculative activity in the Solana ecosystem nearly overnight.

Multiple large-cap tokens based on Solana surged higher Saturday, and the blockchain’s native $SOL token set fresh highs above $275 as the incoming U.S. president backed a new Solana-based $TRUMP token Friday night, calling it his “official” memecoin.

The choice of Solana as an issuance network bumped demand and sentiment for $SOL tokens, as CoinDesk reported Saturday.

$SOL trading volumes have rocketed from Thursday’s $3 billion to over $26 billion in the past 24 hours, with Saturday’s moves bringing weekly gains to over 46%.

That’s a nearly 3,000% surge since three-year lows of $9 in December 2022 following the implosion of crypto exchange FTX and prominent backer Sam Bankman-Fried, which dented sentiment for Solana at the time.

Trump’s official memecoin was issued in late U.S. hours Friday on the Solana blockchain by a team including ecosystem giants Jupiter and Meteora. Prices of Jupiter’s JUP tokens are up 30% in the past 24 hours.

The token launch was co-ordinated by CIC Digital LLC - an affiliate of the Trump Organization, and the newly-formed company Fight Fight Fight LLC, per BBC. The duo holds 80% of the tokens, subject to a vesting period of over three years, and it is unclear how much money Trump might make from the venture.

$TRUMP prices rocketed from a few cents to $14 in less than six hours amid widespread confusion on whether the token was actually backed by Trump or if someone had hacked Trump’s account and issued a fake token.

It trades above $44 in Asian afternoon hours Sunday, grabbing listings on prominent exchanges Coinbase and Binance, as well as several futures products. It has become the third-largest memecoin by market capitalization behind dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB), flipping pepecoin ($PEPE).