Trump's "brazenly corrupt" meme coin
The president's team floated a "night to remember" for the biggest buyers of his meme coin. Tens of millions of dollars poured in.
Full story: How Trump team turned a dinner invite into a crypto boon worth millions
When President Trump's meme coin team announced that the 220 top coin holders would be rewarded with a “night to remember” at Trump's golf club, the coin's price shot up – and made Trump's people a fortune. So with the great Jeremy Merrill, we dug into the crypto data to find out exactly how profitable this presidential promise had been:
The coin’s price has surged more than 30 percent since the announcement, to about $12, boosting the value of the crypto wallets owned by a digital firm affiliated with Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, by roughly $100 million, the review shows.
The Trump-allied team that launched the meme coin also earns fees when the coins are bought or traded, including via a debit-card-friendly “buy now” button on the coin’s website. The team has earned $1.25 million in fees over the past week, the analysis found.
Trump has frequently promoted his desire to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet,” and two of his sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., have described the $TRUMP coin as the “hottest digital meme on earth.”
The dinner promotion “creates the specter of a pay-to-play deal” for wealthy spenders eager to bend the president’s ear, said Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group State Democracy Defenders Action and a former White House associate counsel under President Barack Obama.
“He’s actually selling access, personal access, to him and to the White House if people invest in this meme coin, which really has no intrinsic value,” Canter said.
“If you are a foreign government burdened by tariffs, will you be enticed to invest? If you’re a criminal felon, will you maybe invest in hopes of they’ll give you an opportunity to make your case for a pardon?”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) posted on X: “This isn’t Trump just being Trump. The Trump coin scam is the most brazenly corrupt thing a President has ever done. Not close.”
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