The Official Trump memecoin, ticker $TRUMP, plunged more than 22% this week and touched an all-time low of $1.116 before clawing back a sliver of the loss on Friday, after Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections.
The token, introduced around Donald Trump's January 2025 inauguration, peaked at $73.43 shortly after launch. From that high, it has now surrendered roughly 99% of its value, making it one of the most spectacular collapses in the short history of politically branded digital assets.
The rout extended beyond the memecoin. World Liberty Financial's governance token, WLFI, a decentralized finance project backed by the Trump family, slid more than 6.5% to $0.0477, according to CoinMarketCap data. Both tokens ranked among the biggest decliners in the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Note: Price and percentage figures come from CoinMarketCap and Investing.com data cited in the underlying reports.
What separates this selloff from a broad crypto retreat is that the wider market actually rallied. Bitcoin climbed back above $80,000, gaining 3.33% in a session to $80,379, as U.S. equities surged on the removal of political uncertainty. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1,569.40 points, or 3.03%, to 53,356.12; the S&P 500 added 1.58% to 7,688.62; and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.44% to 25,736.51. Trump's acceptance of the election outcome helped unlock the relief trade, with Bitcoin at one point touching $80,500.
James Butterfill, head of research at digital asset manager CoinShares, told CoinTelegraph that the clearing of election-related uncertainty could allow Bitcoin to stage a broader "relief rally." One market commentary, the Cobie Letter, cautioned that the bounce had the hallmarks of a "bear trap" designed to catch investors positioned for further declines.
The divergence reflects a simple dynamic: tokens tied to Trump's political brand are being repriced for a Washington in which Democrats hold the Senate and the House, while Bitcoin trades on macro liquidity and risk appetite.
Investors are also weighing what a Democratic majority means for the legislative agenda. Several Democrats have pushed for stricter anti-money-laundering and risk-management standards for crypto firms, proposals that much of the industry has resisted. Democrats were pivotal in blocking the CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill that the industry had awaited and that drew most of its support from Republicans.
Stefan Muelbauer, U.S. government relations lead at blockchain security firm CertiK, said the immediate read on the result is that the CLARITY Act is effectively dead, according to CoinTelegraph. That assessment implies the bill may struggle not only during the lame-duck session before the new Congress is seated but also in the next term. Democrats have demanded tougher ethics provisions barring senior officials, Trump among them, from conflicts of interest tied to crypto ventures; even after Republicans accepted some of those changes, the bill failed a September Senate cloture vote, falling short of the 60 votes needed to proceed.
The stakes for the $TRUMP token go beyond sentiment. The coin's value is effectively a proxy for confidence in Trump's political capital, and a Congress controlled by the opposition party reduces the odds of friendly treatment for the president's family crypto businesses. For holders, the near-total erosion from the launch peak underscores how quickly political memecoins can reverse once the narrative that drove them fades.
For the broader digital asset market, the election outcome cuts both ways. A divided government with Democrats in charge lowers the probability of sweeping industry-friendly legislation, but it may also temper the risk of aggressive deregulation that some institutional investors viewed as unsustainable. Bitcoin's recovery above $80,000 suggests traders are, for now, focused on the resolution of political uncertainty rather than on the legislative logjam ahead.
Attention now turns to whether the lame-duck session produces any last push on market-structure rules and to how quickly the new Congress signals its crypto priorities. For $TRUMP, the question is whether the token can find a floor at all, or whether the record low of $1.116 marks another waypoint on the way to zero.
