Trump’s meme coin is a reminder of crypto’s dumbest use case
CNN
President Donald Trump promised crypto investors he’d usher in an era of legitimacy for an industry that’s long been relegated to the financial wilderness — dismissed by some mainstream investors as an highly speculative bet at best or an elaborate Ponzi scheme at worst.
President Donald Trump promised crypto investors he’d usher in an era of legitimacy for an industry that’s long been relegated to the financial wilderness — dismissed by some mainstream investors as an highly speculative bet at best or an elaborate Ponzi scheme at worst. But days before his inauguration, Trump shocked many of his crypto supporters by peddling a digital token known as a meme coin, a functionally worthless asset that trades on hype and are a go-to vehicle for scams known as rug pulls. To be clear, not all meme coins are scams, and the $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins appear to have safeguards built in to prevent a rug pull. Specifically, the Trump coin’s website says its majority holders are subject to a three-year unlocking schedule, so they can’t sell all at once. Yet meme coins have become known for rug pulls, in which developers launch a coin, run up its price and quickly cash out. If that sounds familiar, the “Hawk Tuah” influencer Haliey Welch was recently sued over her own coin, which briefly soared to a $500 million market cap before falling 90%. Welch said in a statement posted to X last month that she takes the situation seriously and is working to help affected investors. Meme coins represent the absurd, at times fraudulent, side of crypto that the increasingly wealthy proponents of the widely traded bitcoin and ether would like to move past. The fact that America’s first “pro-crypto” president is hawking a token with no tangible utility has some in the industry concerned about Trump and his advisers’ judgement as they prepare to overhaul the US regulatory regime with a new zeal for digital assets. “Trump needs to fire his crypto advisors, from top to bottom,” tweeted Gabor Gurbacs, founder of digital asset firm Pointsville.
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President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised that Americans will get larger tax refunds this year thanks to his “big, beautiful bill.”
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