Meme coins plummeted over the weekend as President Donald Trump signed long threatened tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, kicking off a trade war that caused investors to dump risk assets worldwide.
Trump’s own meme coin, dubbed Official Trump, launched a little over two weeks ago, was last down 15% to $17, according to CoinGecko. It rallied to a high of about $73 dollars the weekend of its launch before crashing 50% on inauguration day.
The biggest and most popular meme coins, dogecoin and Shiba Inu, lost about 14% each. Pudgy Penguins was down 13%, while dogwifhat tumbled 26%.
Meme coins as a group have dropped 17% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
The drop began Saturday evening after Trump signed an order imposing 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, as well as a 10% duty on China. The U.S. does about $1.6 trillion in business with the three countries.
“Every coin that recently rallied through January, including memes like [dogecoin], have essentially handed back most of their gains,” said James Davies, CEO and co-founder at trading platform Crypto Valley Exchange.
“Crypto is fundamentally about freedom to make and conduct trades, which runs counter to the global political narrative of the last week,” he added. “As a community, we are pro free-trade … when that is being restricted many investors are risk-off in terms of their holdings. This massively impacts the alt coin market.”
Meme coins were some of the biggest winners after the U.S. presidential election, with some traders seeing it as a green light for a new crypto craze. Others have become worried that the latest Trump fueled meme mania was becoming too hot, however, and was likely to result not just in pain for investors but misallocation to less valuable projects in the industry.
Bitcoin losses Monday were relatively modest compared to meme coins and other smaller cryptocurrencies further out on the risk curve. It was last lower by just 3%, though it could see more pain in the short term as the trade war triggered by Trump’s tariffs plays out.