By Rae Wee and Elizabeth Howcroft
SINGAPORE/LONDON (Reuters) - Donald Trump's newly created cryptocurrency soared on Monday to more than $10 billion in market value, drawing in billions in trading volume, while bitcoin's price hit a record high hours ahead of the U.S. President-elect's return to the White House.
Launched on Friday, Trump's "meme coin", also known as $TRUMP, soared from less than $10 on Saturday morning to as high as $74.59 before giving up some of its huge rise on Monday.
Trump launched the digital token with branding including an image from his attempted assassination in July, expanding his cryptocurrency interests that already include World Liberty Financial.
Melania Trump also launched her own coin, $MELANIA, on Sunday that rallied in price to take its market cap well beyond $1 billion.
Four-fifths of Trump coin's tokens are owned by CIC Digital, an affiliate of Trump's business, and another entity called Fight, Fight, Fight, according to its website. It says the coins are "an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol '$TRUMP'" and are not an investment or security.
The launch of the coins caused surprise and concern even among those in the cryptocurrency industry.
"While it's tempting to dismiss this as just another Trump spectacle, the launch of the official Trump token opens up a Pandora's box of ethical and regulatory questions," said Justin D'Anethan, an independent crypto analyst based in Hong Kong.
The Trump Organization said this month the incoming president would hand over daily management of his multi-billion-dollar real estate, hotel, golf, media and licensing portfolio to his children when he entered the White House.
By 1345 GMT, Trump's coin was trading at $46.93, giving it a market cap of $9.4 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, which ranked it as the 19th biggest cryptocurrency.
Twenty-four-hour trading volume exceeded $41 billion, CoinMarketCap data showed.
The excitement over the so-called memecoins aided a wider rally in cryptocurrency prices as hopes grew among traders and investors that Trump would live up to his promise to act favourably towards the crypto industry.
Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $109,071.86 in early European trading before falling back to trade around $107,600. The world's largest cryptocurrency has surged more than 10% so far this month.
"The cryptocurrency market gained additional popularity in recent hours due to the launch of the TRUMP and MELANIA cryptocurrencies just before the inauguration," said Grzegorz Drozdz, market analyst at Conotoxia Ltd.
"PANDORA'S BOX"
Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Euro Pacific Asset Management, pointed to the jump in $TRUMP's value and called it the new digital gold, on messaging platform X.
Trump has promised to be a "crypto president", and was expected to issue executive orders aimed at reducing crypto regulatory roadblocks and promoting widespread adoption of digital assets.
He was due to assume the presidency at noon ET (1700 GMT) on Monday.
The prospect of looser regulations around crypto policy has been met with fanfare by the industry and had turbocharged a rally in bitcoin following Trump's election victory in November.
The huge rise in the new coin prices prompted concern among some analysts.
"Meme cryptocurrencies, like these, are prone to large fluctuations and we generally consider them as speculative assets," Drozdz at Conotoxia said.
The Trump and Melania cryptocurrencies were both created on the lesser-known Solana blockchain, which CoinMarketCap ranks as the third-biggest blockchain network.
Trump's coin represented a blending of the world of decentralised finance into the political arena, but it also "blurs the lines between governance, profit and influence," D'Anethan said.
"Should public figures, especially those with such political clout, wield this kind of sway in speculative markets? That's a question regulators are unlikely to ignore," he said.
The websites for both Trump and Melania Trump's coins avoid referring to them as cryptocurrencies, instead using the phrase "fungible crypto assets" in their FAQs.
(Additional reporting by Rae Wee and Vidya Ranganathan in Singapore, Tommy Reggiori Wilkes in London and Hannah Lang in New York; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Shri Navaratnam, Louise Heavens and Alex Richardson)
