WWhen Donald Trump won the presidency in November, many crypto fanatics rejoiced, based on his promises to the industry that he would prioritize deregulation and legitimize crypto entrepreneurs. Days before his inauguration, industry heavyweights gathered in Washington for the Crypto Ball, celebrating their new status as DC insiders.
But during the event, Trump shocked almost the entire room online publishing on the launch of a new cryptocurrency called TRUMP. This new currency, called a meme coin, has no inherent value, but its price fluctuates as people buy and sell the coin. Trump fans and opportunistic day traders have generated billions of dollars in sales, driven by loyalty, hype and the opportunity to make money quickly. All of this trading earned the coin’s creators – companies affiliated with the Trump Organization – billions of dollars on paper. A day after its release, Melania Trump announced her own coin, which also rose and fell in crazy spurts. As of Wednesday, TRUMP was the 25th most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, according to CoinMarketCap– even though its price of around $43 was well below its high of $75.
Learn more: What Trump’s victory means for crypto.
Trump’s meme coins have brought attention to crypto and many newcomers to the space. To some, the coins demonstrate Trump’s commitment to crypto and spurring its growth. But many others in the crypto world reacted with revulsion to what they saw as a money grab and a way for Trump to directly profit from his supporters. Trump’s team owns at least 80% of the coin supply, giving them vast power to control its price. Although they will not be allowed to sell their holdings for months, this would cause a market collapse and result in a loss for regular users.
Crypto insiders fear the coins will make the public even more suspicious of an industry already filled with scams and bad faith actors. “The crypto industry has put in power someone whose first act is to point out and take advantage of scam opportunities within crypto,” says crypto researcher and writer Angela Walch. “And it’s just embarrassing.”
Trump downplayed his role in launching the coin, saying during a January 21 meeting press conference: “I don’t know much about it other than I started it.” The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A White House press secretary declined to comment.
But elected officials and legal experts are raising ethical and geopolitical concerns about the tokens, which they say could serve as a vehicle for corruption and conflicts of interest. “These coins allow him to receive financial benefits from foreign adversaries and prioritize his personal interests, to the collective detriment of Americans,” says Puja Ohlhaver, an attorney affiliated with Harvard’s Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation.
What are meme coins?
TRUMP and MELANIA are meme coins: cryptocurrencies that are essentially created by entrepreneurs from scratch by writing code to deploy on a blockchain. Their value comes from how people believe in them and buy them. In order to generate excitement, the teams behind these coins often market them using popular memes that can be shared and repeated on social media. If memes on social media can propel culture, creativity and even ideologywe ask ourselves, so why shouldn’t they also be worth something financially?
Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are two examples, with Dogecoin particularly propelled by Elon Musk, whose tweets about the coin have directed has price spikes. The lack of inherent value makes meme coins particularly volatile and speculative, which, for some, is part of their appeal: If investors buy at the right time, they can make a lot of money. Conversely, they can lose everything extremely quickly if they buy at the top of the market. Meme coins have also been the vehicle for alleged scams, in which investors have lost significant amounts of money.
Trump admirers have often used memes as a marketing tool. During his presidential campaign, a team of content creators flooded social media with pro-Trump meme content. Last summer, unofficial Trump coins with names like Pepe (TRUMP) and Maga People Token (PEOPLE) rose and fell, with some bettors treating them as proxies for his chances of victory.
Trump also has a history of using crypto to make money. He started selling NFT Trading Cards in 2022, and has earned millions, according to financial information documents. In September, he launched Liberty Global Financiala cryptocurrency platform that is not yet live. And in 2025, meme coins may be the easiest way for aspiring crypto entrepreneurs to make money fast.
TRUMP begins negotiating
On January 18, two days before taking the oath of office, Trump launched his token through CIC Digital LLC, a subsidiary of the Trump Organization, as the Crypto Ball was in full swing. This decision surprised the industry. Nick O’Neill, a crypto entrepreneur present at the event, which also included appearances by Snoop Dogg and President Mike Johnson—posted a video on saying that very few people were aware of the token’s existence.
The next day, there was a mad rush to buy and sell the token, causing all kinds of spillover effects. Solana, the blockchain supporting the token, and Coinbase, an exchange used to trade the coin, both experienced a multi-hour transaction. delays. “We did not expect this level of upside,” Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase. wrote on Twitter.
Within a day, the team controlling the token, led by CIC Digital, had tokens worth a few $51 billion on paper. (This figure is not realistic, however, because the more they tried to cash out in real dollars, the more the price would go down.). Later that day, however, Melania Trump released her own coin, MELANIA, which effectively deflated TRUMP’s market capitalization by billions of dollars, as traders appeared to sell their holdings to buy the new coin. Less than an hour after the launch of MELANIA, TRUMP fell from over $70 to around $45. A fake BARRON memecoin not associated with Trump’s youngest son also accumulated a market cap of $460 million before crashing 95%.
Some of Trump’s strongest supporters in the crypto world have accused him of predatory behavior in connection with the coin’s launch. Crypto is supposed to uphold the concept of decentralization; the president’s team controls at least 80% of the TRUMP token supply. Another blockchain analytics company, Bubblemaps, find that 89% of MELANIA’s token supply was in a single crypto wallet. Conor Gregor, a Coinbase executive, wrote on Saturday that Trump’s team made $58 million in trading fees alone.
“Trump’s credibility has been totally destroyed” wrote Michael A. Gayed, investment manager. Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former White House communications director and crypto evangelist, wrote: “No one can honestly think that this is good for our society.”
“There’s a lot of soul-searching going on in the industry right now,” Walch says. “Great, we got the power, but did it serve the purpose we originally set out to achieve?
Concerns about ethics and national security
Critics from outside crypto have also raised ethical concerns. Trump now has a vested interest in an industry he is charged with regulating. (The controlling companies, which are affiliated with Trump’s business, wrote that Trump tokens “are not investments or securities but are an “expression of support.” “) The president’s crypto windfall, critics suggest, is deterring him from cracking down on the industry, which could result in the value of his tokens falling by billions of dollars. . Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who is one of the leading crypto supporters in Congress, written the that “the law must prohibit elected officials from holding coins”.
Some critics worry that these tokens pose a national security threat because they allow foreign agents to purchase large quantities of tokens as leverage over Trump’s policy decisions. These agents could buy tokens to curry favor with Trump or threaten to sell them, which could cause the price of the token to fall. They could also use cryptographic techniques to hide their identities from everyone except Trump, says Allen Lab’s Ohlhaver.
The Founding Fathers attempted to avoid this type of conflict of interest through the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, which prevent a president from using his office to enrich himself. (At the time, giving gifts was a common practice of corruption among European leaders and diplomats.) Some argue that the fact that Trump’s symbolic launch took place before he was sworn in means he was acting as a private citizen. “It’s less complicated for them to launch them BEFORE he officially becomes president,” wrote crypto journalist Zack Guzmán. on. “It would have been much easier to argue that Trump is profiting from the presidency and that, if not, it would have been much easier to violate the Emoluments Clause.”
But Ohlhaver says that as long as Trump owns a share of the chips, there is a significant conflict of interest. “He still owns tokens, the price of which will increase if a foreign adversary exploits them,” she says. Ohlhaver also says the Trump meme coin threatens our public understanding of the money within it. “With the rise of social media and global social networks, it’s very easy to exploit your status and influence to make a new form of money and legitimize it,” she says. “It is important for us to preserve our national public goods and ensure that they serve our common interests, rather than the narrow interests of an elite who will benefit enormously at the expense of everyone else.”
Andrew R. Chow’s book on crypto and Sam Bankman-Fried, Cryptomaniawas published in August.
