Central African Republic launches meme coin

The Central African Republic (CAR) has launched a meme coin in what President Faustin-Archange Touadéra describes as an effort to elevate the global standing of one of the world's poorest nations.

Touadéra announced the initiative on X late on Sunday, nearly three years after his government became the first in Africa—and second in the world after El Salvador—to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.

Meme coins are cryptocurrency tokens inspired by internet memes or trends. They tend to be highly volatile and have little practical use.

Last month, former US President Donald Trump introduced a meme coin known as $Trump, which saw a rapid surge in value, peaking at over $14.5 billion before experiencing a decline.

Despite its wealth in gold and diamonds, CAR remains one of the most impoverished and underdeveloped countries, plagued by years of rebel conflict.

The $CAR meme coin is "an experiment designed to show how something as simple as a meme can unite people, support national development, and put the Central African Republic on the world stage in a unique way," Touadéra stated on X.

However, a dedicated account created for updates and announcements on $CAR was suspended by X as of Monday morning. Touadéra assured that efforts were underway to restore it as soon as possible.

On Monday morning, the $CAR token was trading at $0.22, according to cryptocurrency price tracker CoinGecko.

The CAR meme coin was launched at 10:25 pm UTC on the Solana-based meme coin launchpad Pump.fun. Since its release, it has reached a peak valuation of $527 million, according to data from DexScreener.