Donald Trump is poised to walk into the White House on Tuesday some $US56 billion ($90 billion) richer, thanks to the new crypto token that bears his name. Meme coins, it seems, are back in a big way.

The first meme coin – a moniker for a digital token that has no underlying quality other than its popularity – was arguably Dogecoin, created as a joke in 2013 and caught up in an early cryptocurrency craze. By 2021, it had a market capitalisation of $US85 billion, before a steep slide.