One day before officially becoming 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 a controversial meme coin he gave it his name.
Launched on January 17, the crypto token dubbed the TRUMP meme coin has sparked a considerable amount of discussion and is currently facing backlash over what critics said was a questionable venture for the incoming president.
Critics Condemn TRUMP Meme Coin Toss
As the entire world anticipates Trump's imminent takeover of the White House, the US president-elect surprised the cryptocurrency community by launching his own meme coin on the Solana blockchain. This move has now sparked a firestorm of criticism questioning whether it is ethical for an 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 ill-timed, considering Trump will name the new chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. United States (SEC).
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet”>
> Dropping TRUMP's memecoin 2 days before becoming president is a nasty job
> the new SEC/DOJ guarantees that there will be no prosecution
> 80% of tokens are awarded to insiders DURING the presidency
> most of the people who will lose money will be MAGAs who are not crypto natives
> *should* be a crime but crime is legal now ig?
—Coffeezilla (@coffeebreak_YT) <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/coffeebreak_YT/status/1880538404058005898?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>January 18, 2025
“Dropping the TRUMP memecoin 2 days before becoming president is a nasty job. The new SEC/DOJ does not guarantee any prosecution,” Findeisen said in his x post.
Other critics questioned Trump's new initiative, which in their opinion somewhat blurs the lines between government and business.
Even former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci criticized the new meme coin and described it as a form of “corruption,” arguing that Trump's token could negatively impact the broader digital asset market.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet”>
The Trump meme coin issue is bad for the industry. Don't fool yourself. It is corruption at the level of Idi Amin.
-Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/Scaramucci/status/1880570676043727354?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>January 18, 2025
Speculative movement?
Campaign Legal Center Executive Director Adav Noti accused Trump of using the presidency for his personal gain and said the TRUMP meme coin could be considered a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/us/politics/trump-meme-coin-crypto.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>profit effort
Around 80% of the tokens will reportedly be distributed to people within the incoming president's circle.
“It is literally about profiting from the presidency: creating a financial instrument so that people can transfer money to the president's family in connection with his office. “It is something that is unprecedented,” Noti told the New York Times.
The new meme currency also does not sit well with some figures in the cryptocurrency industry who see it as a dirty tactic.
“That Trump owns 80 percent and scheduling the launch hours before the inauguration is predator and many will likely be harmed,” former Coinbase executive Nick Tomaino said in a post.
TRUMP coin soars
Analysts said the new Trump-based token needed just 15 minutes to reach a market cap of $400 million, and said the meme coin also boosted Solana's native SOL token to an all-time high of $267.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet”>
Ok, yes, the new Trump memecoin website is implemented almost identically to his previous nft website.
Same Cloudflare setup, same implementation with Heroku, same SSL certificate issuer.
HTML structure very similar to the previous one. pic.twitter.com/u1zLD7Vcv7
—cygaar (@0xcygaar) <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/0xCygaar/status/1880458745521795579?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>January 18, 2025
Despite the backlash, the data also showed that the new meme coin saw over 12,000% adoption since its launch.
Market watchers said the coin's value almost reached $35 before settling at around $29, adding that several cryptocurrency traders posted profits and one investor reportedly made between $50,000 and $1.1 million in a few hours.
However, it is too early to say what the future of the token will be, considering that only 20% of the billion TRUMP coins are in circulation. The remaining 80% of the tokens will be launched in the next three years.
Featured image from The Nation, chart from TradingView
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