Memecoin trading tool Hype launches ‘President Memecoin Index’ ahead of Election Day
2024-11-05

Hype, a new memecoin trading platform on Solana, has introduced a “President Memecoin Index” enabling traders to track and trade tokens related to the upcoming U.S. election. 
The index tracks some of the largest memecoins associated, though not officially affiliated, with former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. This includes Doland Tremp (TREMP), MAGA token (TRUMP) and Donald Trump (TRUMP) as well as Kamala Horris (KAMA), Krazy Kamala (KAMALA) and KAMALA HARRIS (HARRIS).
“The challenge with memecoins around events or trends is that sometimes there isn’t ‘one’ coin everyone rallies around. With presidents, for example, there are multiple, and so an index visualization helps capture more surface area around the trend,” Hype founder Ravi Bakhai told The Block in an interview. 
The index is designed to track these tokens' prices and provide insight into potential election outcomes, similar to how betting platforms harness market insight. Some see platforms like blockchain-based Polymarket as providing a less biased view into the likelihood of future events over polls because those with “skin in the game” are incentivized to wager on what they truly believe. 
Presidential memecoins are part of a micro-trend in crypto called “PoliFi,” a play on the portmanteau DeFi. 
“If you think one outcome is going to happen, you would buy that candidate's coin,” Bakhai said. “Memecions are essentially attention markets, so if more attention goes to one candidate, the higher the price will go.”
Right now, mere hours before polls open on Tuesday, Hype’s index shows that the weighted basket of Trump-themed tokens is up 86.9% since the presidential debate in mid-September. Harris-themed tokens are up 48.9%.
“Weirdly enough, the President Memecoin Index closely tracks what we’re seeing on prediction markets like Polymarket/Kalshi. Trump initially had a significant gap just as what we saw in the prediction markets and now Kamala is closing in,” Bakhai said. 
On Polymarket, Trump’s odds now stand at around 57%, down from a recent high above 66% at the end of October. 
Bakhai noted one particular difference between PoliFi token forecasting and betting markets: memecoins have “uncapped upside,” in that a token’s price can rally long after the election is called.
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