rewrite this title Dogecoin, SHIB and PEPE Bounce as Official Trump Meme Coin Sees Middling Gains – Decrypt

It has been a brutal market in recent weeks. But this morning, most major meme coins have finally seen a much welcomed bounce.

That said, the Official Trump (TRUMP) token lags behind its meme coin competitors, posting middling gains comparatively, while President Donald Trump’s trade war rages on.

Sector leaders Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and Pepe (PEPE) have rebounded 9.2%, 7.9%, and 16.3% respectively. Although the fourth largest meme coin by market capitalization, Official Trump (TRUMP), has climbed just 1.5%. It’s now down 21% over the week—the biggest weekly loss among the top five meme coins by market cap.

TRUMP launched just days before the President’s inauguration, sending the market into euphoria as traders believed a new era for crypto was upon us.

However, when the first lady launched her own token, Melania Meme (MELANIA), the TRUMP token crashed 32% over six hours. Both tokens have mostly been in the red since then. The TRUMP token has now sagged 85% from its all-time high to a $2.09 billion market cap.

At its peak, TRUMP was at $15.16 billion. That made it the second largest meme coin by market cap.

As of February 11, 9.6% betters on Myriad Markets—a prediction market owned by Decrypt parent company Dastan—believed that TRUMP will end Q1 as the top meme coin by market cap. But as of today, the share of TRUMP believers has shrunk to just 2.8%, with 68% of betters thinking it stays in fourth place and 15% thinking it falls out of the top 10 entirely.

Out of the top 10 meme coins by market cap, only Brett (BRETT) has performed worse than TRUMP over the past seven days, according to CoinGecko data, falling 25%.

The poor performance of the President’s official meme coin is likely a symptom of Trump falling out of favor in the eyes of the public.

According to pollster YouGov, 38% of US adults believe that Donald Trump is doing a “much worse” job so far in his second term than they expected. Equally, Trump’s disapproval rating has started to climb from 45.8% the week after inauguration to 48.9% last week. In doing this, 51% of US registered voters now view the President unfavorably.

Trump’s second term has already been filled with drama and controversy, including a public argument with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. But most important, at least for crypto investors, has been his trade war with the U.S.’s largest trading partners.

Most recently, Trump’s 25% tariff on steel and aluminium came into effect. That’s caused the European Union to announce it will retaliate with “countermeasures.”

As such, the S&P 500 has also fallen 3.6% over the past five days and extended its monthly loss to 8.4, according to TradingView. With the broader traditional market bleeding, high risk assets like meme coins often also take a hit.

That said, despite the S&P 500’s continued decline of 0.76% on the day, the overall meme coin market, according to CoinGecko, has bounced 8%.

Maybe Fartcoin—which has gained 21% in the past day—really is the future of finance.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.