It’s been a wild week for political meme coins

“Jeo Boden” is now 98.2% off an all-time high set three months ago, while “Kamala Horris” has rallied by 3,875% since May. Some political meme coins have market caps in the millions.

As if the crypto markets weren’t crazy enough, another surreal trend has gained huge ground in recent months: meme coins based on U.S. political candidates.

They’re often accompanied by surreal cartoon avatars of the person in question… and tend to spell their name wrong deliberately.

Following the seismic events of recent days, with Kamala Harris gaining enough support to secure the Democratic nomination after Joe Biden quit the race, these digital assets have been even more volatile than usual. 

The likes of Kamala Horris (KAMA), “Jeo Biden” and “Donald Tremp” are rapidly changing in value as opportunistic traders try to navigate the crypto landscape — and figure out what’ll happen next.

KAMA, a Solana-based memecoin that’s inspired by the current Vice President, was initially launched on May 30 — and at the time, it had a value of just $0.0006.

Fast forward to now and it’s accelerated by a staggering 3,875% — breaking the $0.02 barrier with a fully diluted market valuation of $25.4 million.

This reflects Harris’s growing momentum as she steps up to face Trump in November’s race. According to her team, $100 million has been donated to the Harris campaign since launch, with a record-breaking $81 million coming in on the first day alone. Meanwhile, prediction markets are showing that her chances of victory in the fall are continuing to increase with every passing day.

As you might expect, given his crypto-friendly stance, the most valuable coins in the “PoliFi” meme coin movement all relate to Trump — and often include riffs on his long-running “Make America Great Again” slogan. 

But a lot of these Republican-centered coins have taken an almighty beating recently. The biggest token of all, TRUMP, still has a market cap of $279 million but has shed 20.6% of its value in a week.

Spare a thought for those who held Jeo Boden, too. BODEN is now languishing at $0.01171 after plunging more than 50% over the past seven days — with most of those losses occurring after Sunday’s sudden announcement. This meme coin set a new all-time high of $1.07 back in April, but it’s now down by over 98%. Given that President Biden will bow out of the political limelight when his one and only presidential term ends in January, this is an asset unlikely to recover.

It’s figures like these that show the sheer unpredictability and brutality of gaining exposure to political meme coins. Not only can it be difficult to cash in on profits because of low liquidity, but bearish downturns can be both swift and brutal.

A dark trend

Beyond betting on the runners and riders in the presidential race, and following their fortunes in the news cycle, there’s another worrying trend: tokens that are being established in the wake of misinformation that’s circulating online.

Earlier this week, unsubstantiated rumors were swirling that Joe Biden had died, with some of the accounts that shared these falsehoods attracting tens of thousands of reposts on X.

This has had a direct impact on the memecoins being launched through sites like Pump.fun — with the likes of BIDEAD and BIDONE hitting the market. One particularly crass digital asset has an avatar that appears to show Biden’s skeleton.

What’s going to happen next?

It doesn’t take a world-class crypto trading analyst to deduce that the value of Biden-related memecoins will continue to plunge in value.

But it’s going to be interesting to see what Donald Trump’s imminent appearance at Bitcoin 2024 in Tennessee — scheduled for later today — will do to the likes of MAGA and TRUMP. 

Bullish overtures about the future of the crypto market in Nashville could give some of these tokens a second wind.

Alternatively, it might end up being more of a “sell the fact” scenario — with interest in these tokens waning as soon as he steps off the stage.

With three-and-a-half months still to go until the U.S. heads to the ballot box, the rollercoaster ride concerning political meme coins shows no sign of abating soon. 

And there’s little doubt that brand-new tokens will continue to emerge in response to developments on the campaign trail — such as the Democratic National Convention in August, a potential debate between Harris and Trump on television, and announcements related to who Harris’s VP pick might end up being.