This meme coin moment.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Carino.

President Donald Trump's return to the White House has been seen by many as a boost for the cryptocurrency sector.

During the campaign, he made several crypto-friendly pledges and recently made a splash when he launched his own meme coin shortly before the inauguration.

The Trump token topped out at nearly a $15 billion valuation. It has since fallen quite a bit.

But it continues to raise questions, like, is this a conflict of interest? Or what the heck is a

meme coin? We called up Axios reporter Brady Dale, who also writes their crypto newsletter to get some answers.

They're a speculative instrument that I sort of view them as a game.

You know, there are these cryptocurrencies that capture an idea.

So the most famous one is Dogecoin, that, you know, funny dog that everyone sees all over

the internet.

And then, you know, these days, there's this blockchain called Solana

that's very fast and easy to use and cheap to use.

And this app was spun up called Comp.fun,

that made it very easy to just create new meme coins

like super, super fast.

And so thousands get created every day.

And it's just a game where people watch the new ones come out and ask themselves, which of these ideas is the funniest, which of these ideas is the catchiest. And they buy some, you know, making a bet that they can pick it correctly. And then, you know, these coins typically don't last very long. Sometimes they do, but typically they don't. And so you're trying to like like, guess which ones will grab everyone's attention. You know, if it does start to go up,

you try to sell at their right time because you sort of assume it's not going to last forever.

So it's this big, massive gambling game that people are playing together. Because right now in

crypto, there's nothing else really interesting to do other than buying Bitcoin

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