A day before he officially becomes the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump is making waves in the cryptocurrency landscape – not because of his upcoming inauguration on January 20 – but because of the launch of the platform controversial meme coin he called himself.
Launched on January 17, the cryptocurrency dubbed the TRUMP meme coin has sparked considerable debate and is now facing backlash over what critics said was a questionable venture for the modern president.
Critics condemn the introduction of the TRUMP meme coin
While everyone is anticipating Trump’s upcoming takeover of the White House, the American president-elect surprised the cryptocurrency community by launching his own meme coin on the Solana blockchain. The move has now sparked a firestorm of criticism questioning whether it is ethical for the American president to launch his meme coin.
Popular YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, also known as Coffeezilla, believes the launch, which comes just days before Trump’s inauguration, is pushed back considering Trump will be appointing a modern chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
>dropping memecoin TRUMP 2 days before he becomes president is a nasty job
>modern SEC/DOJ guarantees no prosecution
>80% of tokens belong to insiders DURING the presidency
> most people losing money are MAGAs who are not native cryptocurrency users
> *should* be a crime, but crime is legal now, ig?— Coffeezilla (@coffeebreak_YT) January 18, 2025
“Dropping memecoin TRUMP 2 days before he becomes president is a nasty job. New SEC/DOJ guarantees no prosecution,” Findeisen said in his X post.
Other critics questioned Trump’s modern venture, which they said somewhat blurred the lines between government and business.
Even former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci sharply criticized the modern meme coin, describing it as a form of “corruption”, arguing that Trump’s token could adversely affect the broader digital asset market.
Trump meme coins are bad for the industry. Don’t deceive yourself. This is Idi Amin-level corruption.
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) January 18, 2025
Speculative move?
Campaign Legal Center Executive Director Adav Noti accused Trump of using the presidency for personal gain, arguing that the TRUMP meme coin could be considered speculative effort.
According to reports, about 80% of the tokens will be distributed to people close to the future president.
“This is literally monetizing the presidency – creating a financial vehicle through which people can give money to the president’s family in connection with his office. “It’s beyond unprecedented,” Noti told the Novel York Times.
The modern meme coin also doesn’t sit well with some cryptocurrency industry figures, seeing it as a filthy tactic.
“Trump owns 80 percent and sets premiere times before the inauguration predatory and many will likely suffer as a result,” former Coinbase executive Nick Tomaino wrote in the post.
The TRUMP coin is soaring
Analysts said the modern Trump-based token needed just 15 minutes to reach a market capitalization of $400 million, saying the meme coin also pushed Solana’s native token SOL to an all-time high of $267.
Ok, Trump’s modern memecoin site is implemented almost identically to his previous NFT site.
Same Cloudflare setup, same Heroku deployment, same SSL certificate issuer.
Very similar HTML structure as before. pic.twitter.com/u1zLD7Vcv7
— cigaar (@0xcygaar) January 18, 2025
Despite the backlash, the data also showed that the modern meme coin has seen over 12,000% adoption since its launch.
Market observers said the coin’s value almost reached $35 before settling at around $29, adding that several cryptocurrency traders reported profits, with one investor reportedly making between $50,000 and $1.1 million in a matter of hours.
However, it is too early to determine the future of the token, considering that only 20% of the 1 billion TRUMP coins are in circulation. The remaining 80% of the tokens will be released over the next three years.
Featured image from The Nation, chart from TradingView
