The new Trump cryptocurrency experienced an extraordinary surge in value, skyrocketing by 19,000% from its initial price, according to cryptocurrency tracker data released on Sunday.

The coin's launch was announced by President-elect Donald Trump early Saturday through posts on Truth Social and X, where he invited users to join his “Trump community.”

As a meme coin – a digital token with no real-world value – it began trading at $0.1824 on Saturday morning. By Sunday at 06:00 GMT, the price had soared to $36.6, reaching a fully diluted market capitalization of $36 billion, with trading volume exceeding $14 billion, according to Dexscreener.

Trump's crypto launch sparks ethical concerns 

Trump’s company, CIC Digital LLC, owns 80% of the coin's supply, with 200 million tokens in circulation, and plans to expand to 1 billion over the next three years, as per the project’s website.

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Eric Trump, the president-elect's son, praised the coin's success, posting on X, “I am extremely proud of what we continue to accomplish in crypto. $Trump is currently the hottest digital meme on earth.”

However, Trump’s decision to launch the cryptocurrency just days before his inauguration has raised concerns among ethics watchdogs. Jordan Libowitz, Vice President for Communications at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, remarked, “It is absolutely wild.”

Libowitz continued, “After decades of seeing presidents-elect spend the time leading up to inauguration separating themselves from their finances to show that they don’t have any conflicts of interest, we now have a president-elect who, the weekend before the inauguration, is launching new businesses along with promises to deregulate... those sectors in a way to just blatantly profit off his own presidency.”

The launch of Trump’s meme coin has sparked questions regarding its potential influence on his administration's stance on cryptocurrency. Crypto firms have already contributed at least $10 million to Trump's inaugural fund, with many industry executives expected at his swearing-in ceremony on Monday.

Back in July, Trump vowed to make America "the crypto capital of the planet" if he is re-elected to office, highlighting cryptocurrency is pivotal to his vision of the country in the future during a Bitcoin Conference in Nashville.

The former president promised to ensure the government never sells its Bitcoin assets and establish a "strategic reserve" under his administration, predicting the digital currency could exceed gold's $16 trillion market capitalization. 

“For too long our government has violated the cardinal rule that every bitcoiner knows by heart: Never sell your bitcoin… This afternoon I’m laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world, and we’ll get it done,” Trump said.

Read more: Crypto giant Binance to pay $4.3 bn penalty after breaching US laws