$Trump is already worth billions. What to know about the meme coin.

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Just days ahead of his return to the White House, President Trump and his wife Melania launched a pair of meme coins that have skyrocketed in value and earned them billions of dollars, at least on paper. Dubbed $TRUMP and $MELANIA, the tokens are a type of cryptocurrency that doesn’t serve any economic purpose and whose value is based largely on the popularity of internet memes.

The market cap of the $TRUMP token stood at about $9 billion as of 7:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday; $MELANIA hovered around $810 million. Trump commented on his meme coin for the first time Tuesday afternoon when asked by a reporter whether he plans to continue selling products that benefit him personally.

“Well I don’t know if it benefitted. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know much about it other than I launched it," he said.

“I heard it was very successful. I haven’t checked it. Where is it today?" The tokens drew swift criticism from ethics watchdog groups that said they create significant conflicts of interest for the president.

Here’s what you should know about the new meme coins: Meme coins are created based on funny or viral internet memes—a joke, an image or a turn of phrase that is often associated with animals or celebrities. Because of their fun and lighthearted nature, the tokens typically serve no purpose other than to bring a few chuckles to an internet community keen on sharing the joke. In the case of the president’s token, the meme is a picture of him holding his fist in the air with the words “fight, fight, fight" in the background, a phrase he mouthed after being shot in the upper right ear during a rally in Butler, Pa., last summer.