Tiptoe through crypto as Trump meme coins slump

The Sage of Omaha, otherwise known as Warren Buffett, once told Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that bitcoin was “probably rat poison squared”.

He later told CNBC that “in terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending”.

Buffett is famous for investing in companies that actually produce stuff and for hanging in for the long term. It’s the reason the Berkshire Hathaway stock price has risen about 52,000% in the past four decades.

Too bad, then, that even Buffett’s red line has been crossed with the firm’s multimillion-dollar investment in a Brazilian crypto-linked bank. Let’s see how that works out.

Meanwhile, the crypto world continues to display all the mania that makes people lose their minds and their money (and history has warnings aplenty such as the Dutch tulip mania and the South Sea Bubble).

Bitcoin touched a sweat-inducing $109,000 in the run-up to Donald Trump’s inauguration, before sagging to $91,200 as uncertainty grows over the effect of the president’s looming tariff war with the US’s biggest trading partners. The “coin” is back around $94,000 but some traders see it breaking its $90,000 support and after that, who knows?

Along with the meltdown of other cryptocurrencies, two of the victims of this volatility are Trump and first lady Melania’s own meme coins.

Launched on January 17, $Trump surged to a peak of more than $14.5bn in overall market value two days later. It’s now slumped by two thirds. $Melania, meanwhile, is 50% off its peak after a huge sell-off, Forbes reports.

While meme coins are not actual cryptocurrencies, trading fees around $Trump have reportedly touched the $100m mark in two weeks, according to a Reuters investigation.

Bubbles are wonderful for those who know what they’re doing. For the uninformed rubes, not so much. Just ask the former directors of long-gone Barings Bank who, old guard that they were, didn’t have a clue about derivatives trading and closed their eyes while a rogue trader led the bank off a cliff.