Trump shrugs off billions made through meme coin launch

President Trump shrugged off the news that he made billions of dollars through the launch of his new meme crypto coin.

During a press conference Tuesday, his first full day back in the White House, Trump was asked by a reporter if he intends to continue products that benefit himself, like the $TRUMP coin.

“Well, I don’t know if it benefited. I don’t know where it is,” Trump said in comments highlighted by Mediaite. “I don’t know much about it other than I launched it. I heard it was very successful. I haven’t checked it, where is it today?”

“You made a lot of money sir,” the reporter replied.

“How much?” Trump questioned.

“Several billion dollars it seems like in the last several days,” the reporter said.

The president shrugged off the comment, saying several billion is “peanuts” for the people he’s spent the last few days with.

Seated in front of his Cabinet nominees at the Inauguration on Monday were tech’s wealthiest people: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has been appointed to lead Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Trump announced his first official cryptocurrency last week and over his inauguration weekend it shot up in value quickly. The price rose to nearly $30 by midday on Saturday and the market value of the coin was $30 billion on paper since the launch.

The tech entrepreneurs attending Trump’s events in Washington this week unscored the months-long effort by the industry to mend its relationship with Trump, who had previously bashed the companies and Silicon Valley.

Concerns have been raised about what influence, if any, they will have over Trump during his second term.