Trump didn't become a crypto billionaire overnight

US President Donald Trump's meme coin may be a classic way to make money – not unlike his $60 Bibles made in China and $400 gold sneakers – but it's not a venture that can skyrocket wealth.

Several media outlets reported a huge increase in the 78-year-old's net worth over the weekend, and these figures have taken off on social media.

The president's net worth suddenly increased by 800 percent thanks to a digital asset that is functionally worthless.

Of course he remains a billionaire, but one of those single-digit ones – hundreds of billions of dollars away from the levels of the tech oligarchs who surrounded him at Monday's inauguration, writes cnn.

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But how is it going?

Calculating the wealth of rich people is not as simple as it might be for you or me.

We, the average person, have a salary or wages and maybe some assets like a house and a retirement account, if you're lucky. You add those things up, get out of debt, and there you are.

But the super-rich often have a wide range of assets, like stock options and shares of private companies, whose values ​​are a little more unclear.

In financial media, Forbes and Bloomberg have entire teams dedicated to reporting on the daily fluctuations in the wealth of the world's richest people, reports Telegraph.

Both estimate that Trump's wealth, which is mostly tied to real estate and shares in social media company Truth Social, is worth just over $6 billion.

Then, Trump and his wife, Melania, late last week introduced their own meme coins $TRUMP and $MELANIA — essentially digital currencies that are, officially, the cryptocurrencies endorsed by the president and the First Lady. But, in reality, they are traded purely on emotional grounds and have no theoretical use inside or outside the cryptocurrency space.

In the chaos of these introductions, someone created a coin called “Barron,” which turned out to be unrelated to the president and First Lady’s son, Barron Trump. That coin, according to Crypto.com, looks like a typical scam scheme that has made meme coins synonymous with scams.

Read too After Trump, Melania also launches her own cryptocurrency "$Melania"

Neither Forbes nor Bloomberg include Trump's crypto holdings in their calculations because, as Bloomberg points out, "their speculative nature, volatility and limitations make them difficult to value."

The official $TRUMP website says that 80 percent of the coin's supply is controlled by two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization, the president's private conglomerate.

Its value – which reflects the total value, assuming all tokens are available – reached about $72 billion on Friday, with 80 percent going to the Trump Org at nearly $58 billion.

Value is especially questionable in the world of cryptocurrencies because it assumes that the price of a given asset will remain stable, which… won’t happen.

Consistent with the volatility of meme coins, $TRUMP surged more than 1000 percent over the weekend, then lost half its value by Monday — the kind of dizzying loss that makes meme coins the most unsafe of the largely unregulated cryptocurrency casino gaming machines.

Even Bitcoin, the most popular and “safest” token, is too prone to wild fluctuations for many traditional investors.

It's certain that the 78-year-old will make some money from this, because, well, he loves selling products.

Read too Why Bitcoin Is Breaking Records Right Now - Experts Say It's Not Just Because of Trump

Put the name Trump on a Bible, sneakers, watch, or perfume and let the profits flow.

Trump coins probably have less direct use than any of these products, but they are a visible, unregulated, and ultimately anonymous way to show commitment to the brand.

"He understands that the power and theme of the presidency allows him to make a lot of money selling Trump coins - this is completely consistent with his character, and he doesn't care about potential conflicts of interest," James said. /Telegraph/