The news: Several websites selling President Donald Trump-branded watches, sneakers, and fragrances now accept the $TRUMP meme coin as a payment method, per Bloomberg.

The cryptocurrency launched ahead of Trump’s inauguration in January and has fluctuated in price. As of writing, $TRUMP had a market cap of $5.49 billion, per CoinMarketCap.

Why this matters: We predicted that crypto payments would get a boost during Trump’s second term. His administration is expected to bring industry-friendly regulatory clarity that could help crypto ownership and payments grow.

We’re already seeing movement in that direction:

• Crypto exchange Kraken launched Kraken Pay this week, letting users send crypto in their accounts to friends or family over any messaging service via paylink. Peer-to-peer payments are a strong use case for crypto payments, which is why PayPal offers it with its stablecoin as well.
• Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said the US banking industry is ready to embrace crypto payments when the proper regulations are put in place.

Our take: Using $TRUMP as a payment method likely won’t take off beyond Trump-branded products given the crypto’s volatility. But it shows that crypto payments are already positioning for growth just weeks after Trump took control of the White House.

Instead of meme coins, stablecoins have a strong payments use case, and given Trump’s recent executive order prioritizing the assets, we expect to see real momentum for this asset class soon. We forecast 16% of crypto owners will make a crypto payment this year.

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