It was January 2025, crypto fever was raging, and Donald J. Trump was preparing to return to the White House. So when Fatime Elrgdawy¡¯s friend told her about an online message from the U.S. president-elect hyping the launch of his own crypto coin ¡ª ¡°GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW¡± ¡ª she thought: ¡°Oh my God, this is brilliant.¡±
If Trump was putting his name behind it, Elrgdawy recalls thinking, ¡°it must be a legitimate investment.¡±
The 29-year-old software project engineer in Santa Barbara, California, put $2,000 of her savings into the $TRUMP meme coin ¡ª a purely speculative crypto token whose value is often driven by social media hype. All that remained, she thought, was to sit back and wait for the price to climb.
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