It’s been a wild week for political meme coins

“Jeo Boden” is down 98.2% from its all-time high set three months ago, while “Kamala Horris” is up 3,875% since May. Some political meme coins have market caps in the millions of dollars.

As if the cryptocurrency markets weren’t crazy enough, another surreal trend has taken off in recent months: meme coins based on US political candidates.

These are usually accompanied by larger-than-life cartoon avatars of the person in question… and they often misspell their name on purpose.

Following the seismic events of recent days, with Joe Biden dropping out of the race and Kamala Harris gaining enough support to secure the Democratic nomination, these digital assets have been more volatile than ever.

Names like Kamala Horris (KAMA), “Jeo Biden” and “Donald Tremp” are rapidly changing value as opportunistic investors try to navigate the crypto world and figure out what’s coming next.

KAMA, a memecoin based on Solana and inspired by the current Vice President, was first launched on May 30 and was valued at just $0.0006 at the time.

KAMA maximum price chart, May 30 – July 27, 2024 | Source: CoinGecko

Today, it has broken the $0.02 barrier with an incredible acceleration of 3.875%, reaching a fully diluted market valuation of $25.4 million.

That reflects Harris’ growing momentum as she steps up to take on Trump in the November race. According to her team, $100 million has been donated to the Harris campaign since it launched, with a record-breaking $81 million coming in on the first day alone. Meanwhile, prediction markets show her chances of winning in the fall continue to improve with each passing day.

As you might expect, given its crypto-friendly stance, the most valuable coins in the “PoliFi” meme coin movement are all Trump-related and often contain references to his long-standing slogan “Make America Great Again.”

Best political meme coins | Source: CoinMarketCap

But many of these Republican-centric coins have taken a hit recently. The largest of them all, TRUMP, still has a market cap of $279 million but has lost 20.6% of its value in a week.

Spare a thought for those holding Jeo Boden. BODEN is currently crawling at $0.01171 after dropping more than 50% in the past seven days — most of those losses coming after Sunday’s sudden announcement. The meme coin set a new all-time high of $1.07 in April, but is now down more than 98%. This is an asset that is unlikely to recover, given that President Biden will likely step back from the political spotlight when his sole presidential term ends in January.

It’s numbers like these that show how unpredictable and relentless exposure to political meme coins can be. Not only is it difficult to monetize profits due to low liquidity, but bearish declines can be both swift and brutal.

BODEN 1-month price chart | Source: CoinGecko A dark trend

Beyond betting on runners and cyclists in the presidential race and tracking their fates in the news cycle, there’s another worrying trend: tokens created in the wake of misinformation circulating online.

Earlier this week, false rumors emerged that Joe Biden had died, and some of the accounts sharing these false claims were shared tens of thousands of times on X.

This has had a direct impact on memecoins launched via sites like Pump.fun — sites like BIDEAD and BIDONE have launched. One particularly crude digital asset’s avatar appears to depict Biden’s skeleton.

What will happen next?

It doesn’t take a world-class cryptocurrency trading analyst to conclude that the value of memecoins linked to Biden will continue to fall.

But it will be interesting to see what Donald Trump’s appearance at Bitcoin 2024 in Tennessee later today will do to names like MAGA and TRUMP.

Bullish statements about the future of the cryptocurrency market in Nashville could see some of these tokens surge again.

Alternatively, as interest in these tokens wanes once they are off the scene, more of a “sell the truth” scenario could emerge.

With three and a half months until the polls in the United States, there is no sign that the roller coaster ride of political money will abate anytime soon.

And there’s little doubt that brand new tokens will continue to emerge in response to campaign developments—for example, the Democratic National Convention in August, a possible televised debate between Harris and Trump, and announcements about who Harris could be running for vice president.