What yr is it? Because I used to be reliably knowledgeable this was 2025, but it surely seems I ought to be anticipating a brand new lockdown at any second. Bitcoin has surged to its highest all-time worth, Donald Trump is about to step into the White House as soon as extra, and meme cash are battling it out for market share—besides this time, the chief proponents are none aside from the incoming president and first girl.
US president-elect (fairly presumably precise president by the point you learn this story) Donald Trump launched $Trump over the weekend, a meme coin co-ordinated by CIC Digital LLC, a Trump-affiliated organisation that has beforehand performed an element in dealing with hot-ticket client objects like Trump-branded sneakers and NFTs.
The worth of $Trump rocketed to just about $15 billion in general market cap, earlier than nosediving off a cliff right down to nearly eight billion {dollars} by Sunday night, and now seems to have evened out to between 9 and eleven billion {dollars} complete worth general.
That has additionally in all probability modified by the point you learn this. Crypto is risky, you say? No one’s extra shocked than me.
However, a contributing issue to $Trump coin’s latest stumbles appears to have been the launch of $Melania, a meme coin launched by first girl to-be Melania Trump on Sunday, the day earlier than Trump’s inauguration. Speculation means that traders dropped off the Trump-train in favour of hedging their bets together with his spouse as a substitute, inflicting a dip in uptake of the gold-toilet-enthusiast’s crypto token.
BREAKING: Donald Trump’s memecoin, $TRUMP, crashes over -40% as Melania Trump launches her personal memecoin.This is past insane. pic.twitter.com/6Oj2GGqjqFJanuary 19, 2025
Meanwhile, bitcoin has hit an all-time excessive of $109,000 per token, due to a so-called “god candle” that despatched the previously-beleaguered coin hovering to new heights. What with the brand new president now seemingly a fan of the crypto market (after beforehand labelling bitcoin a “rip-off” and expressing mistrust of cryptocurrency as an entire), it appears the market is reacting to the concept that the incoming administration could also be on the cusp of legitimising crypto in methods beforehand thought unlikely.
Sorry, I zoned out for a second there and thought concerning the infinite prospects of multiverse concept, as we seem like within the worst one. Anyway, the actually essential query here’s what this implies for us PC players, or at the least I’m making it crucial query for the sake of my sanity.
A brand new crypto-mining increase affecting GPU costs, maybe? Well, who is aware of at this level. Certainly, crypto mining continues to be very a lot a present problem, though it is available in many varieties, as even a Raspberry Pi might be cattle-prodded into mining crypto (badly).
Many cash at the moment are Proof of Stake however there are sufficient mineable (Proof of Work) cash in the marketplace that, given the crypto upsurge as an entire, it is not completely unthinkable that demand for crypto-crunching {hardware} would possibly put a squeeze on graphics card shares as soon as extra. It’s within the realms of chance at the least, though it appears not possible at this level.
Energy prices are an enormous issue, for one. And bitcoin is not mined on GPUs anymore (at the least at scale, due to the rise of ASICs), though that is not ruling out the likelihood {that a} new proof-of-work, GPU-friendly coin might rise, kraken-like, from the depths of our biggest fears.
A whole lot of issues are attainable from this level ahead. That’s the takeaway. It’s a courageous new day for the world’s greatest superpower, and, it appears, a courageous new day for cryptocurrency too.
