Trump has made billions from his coin. But it is tearing the crypto world apart

Dressed in ballgowns, tuxedos and “Make Bitcoin Great Again” baseball caps, a crowd of some of the country’s most powerful cryptocurrency executives gathered a few blocks from the White House for a lavish party three days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, toasting an incoming administration that had vowed to promote the industry’s interests.

Even Snoop Dogg joined the festivities, offering a rendition of Don’t Stop Believin’.

The Trump coin generated $US58 million in fees for the Trump family in less than a day.Credit: Bloomberg

But the crypto millionaires and billionaires were caught off guard by what happened next.

At 9pm on January 17, with the festivities in full swing, Trump announced on social media that he was launching a new cryptocurrency – a so-called memecoin known simply as $USTrump.

The surprise disclosure raised fresh ethical and legal concerns about the ways that Trump continues to cash in on his power and fame, in this case by marketing a digital asset in an inherently volatile and speculative market to millions of his followers.

It set off a wave of criticism from inside the industry that he says he wants to champion.

‘Corrupt and self-interested’

Crypto executives criticised the move as a cash grab, saying that Trump had undercut the industry’s credibility at the very moment when proponents were seeking a more prominent place for digital currencies in mainstream finance and business.

His venture, they said, created a brief and highly publicised bubble that partly deflated within a few days, even as Trump’s family and its business partners collected millions of dollars from fees on purchases and sales of the coin.

“It makes it all look corrupt and self-interested,” said Nic Carter, a vocal supporter of Trump who runs the crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures and was at the Crypto Ball as the new $USTrump coin was announced.

An analysis by the crypto forensics company Chainalysis showed that most people who bought $USTrump were likely to be inexperienced retail investors, possibly dabbling in crypto for the first time. These traders “roughly broke even”, analysis said, though more than 100,000 of them lost money.

Yet by one estimate, the launch of $USTrump generated $US58 million ($93 million) in fees for the Trump family in less than a day. As of Wednesday night, the family also owned, at least on paper, around $US22 billion worth of $USTrump at its $US27.80 price – already a more than 60 per cent drop from the peak. That price would crash even further if the family did a so-called rug pull and moved to rapidly sell off its holdings.

Asked about the coin’s launch at the White House, Trump said “I don’t know much about it”.

But even after the inauguration, he continued to repost the celebratory announcement of the $USTrump token – effectively urging more people to buy the coin after its price collapsed.

Ryan Selkis, a crypto entrepreneur who was one of the president’s earliest supporters in the industry, said on social media that the memecoin episode would cost the Trump administration “a lot of $US and goodwill”.

Another crypto executive, Gabor Gurbacs, wrote on the social media platform X after the coin’s price plummeted: “Trump needs to fire his crypto advisors, from top to bottom and replace with people who know what they are doing.”

The memecoin launch was the first time the Trump family had issued a digital currency that any investor could buy or sell on crypto exchanges. But the plan, one Trump Organisation executive said, grew out of an earlier effort organised in part by Bill Zanker, a serial entrepreneur and friend of Trump’s who has sold back rubs, gym equipment and self-help courses.

Zanker and the Trump family began selling $US99 digital trading cards in 2022 depicting Trump as a superhero, in a crypto-based format known as a nonfungible token, or NFT.

But NFTs, at least in theory, serve as digital artwork or collectibles, whereas the Trump token was treated by buyers more like GameStop shares, the so-called meme stock that many amateur traders bought in recent years in hopes of earning a quick profit.

The crypto U-turn

A one-time crypto sceptic, Trump embraced the industry on the campaign trail last year, promising to end the Biden administration’s regulatory crackdown on crypto firms.

“We’re going to make a lot of money for the country,” Trump said on Thursday as he signed an executive order at the White House pledging to promote the crypto industry.

It’s a business in which Trump has a substantial personal stake. In September, he and his sons helped start World Liberty Financial, a company designed to facilitate borrowing and lending in digital currencies.

Since his election victory, Trump has made a series of personnel selections at regulatory agencies that seem poised to help the industry.

In an interview on Friday, Eric Trump, the president’s middle son, dismissed criticism of the decision to release the $USTrump tokens and questions about whether it was a conflict of interest for the Trump family to be introducing its own digital currency while the president is appointing financial regulators.

“The $USTrump trading card and World Liberty Financial are two of the most successful projects in crypto history,” he said.

The Crypto Ball was promoted as a celebration of the industry’s political success – the sort of party that crypto enthusiasts usually throw on yachts and beaches, just transplanted to an auditorium a 15-minute walk from the White House.

It was also an opportunity for top crypto executives to network with some of the most influential figures in Washington. Fred Thiel, CEO of the bitcoin mining firm Mara Holdings, chatted with House Speaker Mike Johnson, who sent a text to Trump right in front of him. “Everyone was very pumped,” Thiel said in an interview.

Eric Trump has defended the family’s move into crypto. Credit: AP

But it turned out the most important action in the crypto market was happening on social media. “Trump Meme is HERE!” Trump wrote on Truth Social and X as Snoop Dogg took the stage. “It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!”

Proponents of digital currencies say they can grow into a widely used means of exchange, allowing instant transfers of wealth efficiently and privately, outside the traditional banking system. Memecoins, a type of digital currency based on a joke or a celebrity mascot, are controversial in the crypto world. They have no practical utility and are often deployed in pump-and-dump schemes or other scams.

But traders with good instincts can generate quick profits – if they buy quickly as the price is rising and then sell their holdings before earlier buyers cash out.

Josh Bailey, a crypto trader in Austin, Texas, saw Trump’s announcement almost immediately after it was posted. At first he wasn’t sure if it was real. “The president of the United States launching a memecoin,” Bailey said. “I was not expecting that.”

Soon the coin’s price was surging. Within a few hours, the total value of all the $USTrump in circulation was more than $US5 billion. Bailey decided to put in $US12,000. By the time he cashed out, his trove had more than quintupled in value.

By Sunday morning, Trump’s coin was among the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world, and his partnership’s holdings were worth more than $US50 billion on paper. A business entity controlled by Trump Organisation and its partners owned 80 per cent of the coins and collected fees as the coins were traded.

Eric Trump, in a social media post, hailed the new investment as “the hottest digital meme on Earth”.

Already, though, Trump’s crypto supporters were growing frustrated.

Many who attended the Crypto Ball were effectively cut out of the moneymaking opportunity, unable to buy the coin early enough to profit because they were out partying rather than online.

“I’m legitimately heated about it,” Carter said. “Why wouldn’t they just do an announcement over the speakers?”

Then, on Sunday afternoon, a post appeared on Melania Trump’s X account: She was launching a memecoin of her own, essentially creating a competitor in the market. The price of $USTrump plummeted by 60 per cent over the next day.

Suddenly, the industry’s enthusiasm for Trump turned to fury.

Justin Bons, a crypto executive, said the back-to-back memecoin announcements were “nothing more than blatant money grabs”. Another trader said he was “missing Gary Gensler right now,” a reference to the former Securities and Exchange Commission chair who filed numerous lawsuits against crypto companies.

The new Trump token also quickly generated legal questions about whether it constituted a security and should have been subject to federal disclosure and registration requirements.

Melania Trump also launched a coin. Credit: X

The $USMelania tokens “are digital collectibles”, the family said as it announced the offering, “not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity”. But trading patterns show that this was not how buyers treated these tokens – buying and selling them in most cases in an effort to make money.

During the Biden administration, the SEC under Gensler adopted an aggressive posture towards cryptocurrencies, arguing that the vast majority of them were securities that should be closely regulated.

In 2023, the SEC accused the backers of a cartoon NFT series called Stoner Cats of selling an unregistered security after the images were marketed in a way that “led investors reasonably to expect to profit from the managerial and entrepreneurial efforts of” the backers.

Allison Herren Lee, a former SEC commissioner, said that during her tenure the new Trump family coins would certainly have generated a staff review to evaluate if they complied with the law.

“That analysis does not turn on whether the promoters call it a security,” she said. “It turns on whether it’s marketed as an investment, meaning generally that purchasers will get a return based on the efforts of others.”

David Sacks, a venture capitalist whom Trump appointed to oversee his administration’s tech policy, said last week that the coin was “like a baseball card or a stamp” and “totally fine” to sell.

It is already clear that some of the buyers of the $USTrump token jumped too slowly and ended up losing money. During one series of trades, an investor using the pseudonym Ansem spent $US9 million in cryptocurrency to buy $USTrump just before it fell in value, and then sold the holdings two hours later at a roughly $US2 million loss, according to public transaction records first identified by an account called Lookonchain.

Still, over the next few days, the Ansem account continued trading $USTrump, the records show, perhaps in the hope of making up the loss.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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