friday night, Just days before the inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump visited X to celebrate the launch of his new meme coin. “Now is the time to celebrate everything we stand for,” he wrote. “victory!” It’s a move that, at least on paper, appears to have inflated Trump’s personal wealth by billions of dollars before launching the most cryptocurrency-friendly administration in history.
With this launch, Trump joins the ranks of celebrities like Iggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner, and, more recently, Haliey Welch, better known as the “Hawk Tuah” girl. They all launched their own meme coins last year. mad It describes these currencies as “a type of cryptocurrency that generally has no utility beyond financial speculation.”
The Trump coin recently reached a market capitalization of $5.2 billion and a fully diluted value of $26 billion, referring to its theoretical value if all possible coins were in circulation. Trump’s new friend Elon Musk is known to be a big supporter of Dogecoin, one of the most popular meme coins. Dogecoin was named after the same meme that inspired his newly created Department of Government Efficiency.
“It’s literally cashing in on the presidency.”
Although the coin’s website states it is “non-political and has no affiliation with any political campaign, political office, or government agency,” some critics claim there are serious ethical concerns. “Unlike traditional Trump-branded ventures, the pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrencies means anyone in the world can invest without identification, potentially exposing them to undue influence over a sitting president,” said fintech analyst Boaz Sobrado. “It may raise concerns,” he wrote. forbes. Adav Noti, Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center, said: new york times “It’s literally cashing in on the presidency. “It’s about creating financial vehicles so that people can transfer funds to their families in connection with the presidency.”
“We have a president-elect who is opening new businesses the weekend before his inauguration with promises of deregulation,” said Jordan Liebowitz, vice president of communications for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a nonprofit group in Washington. Politico.
Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former spokesman and now staunch critic, posted that $TRUMP was “Idi Amin-level corruption” and “making a mockery of the industry we are working so hard to build.”
Meme coins are the latest in a bizarre line of quirky and very strange interpretations of “commodity.” Last February, Trump debuted gold “Never Surrender High-Tops” for $399 at Sneaker Con, and Fox News applauded his appeal to black voters. In March, he began advocating for the $59.99 “God Bless the USA Bible,” which includes lyrics to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” chorus. (Trump’s inaugural committee confirmed he would do so. ~ no He’ll use one of these Bibles to take the presidential oath of office on Monday.) In August, Trump released a new round of his “baseball card” NFTs. “These cards even show me dancing and holding Bitcoin,” Trump explained in a video posted to Truth Social. Perhaps in the next round he will have his own meme coin.
