President Donald Trump is not a technology enthusiast. The 78-year-old billionaire famously does not use email, own a personal computer, or send text messages. For most of the 2010s, he communicated with the world via his Twitter account. But even that did not reflect any real tech savvy: For a time he reportedly responded to his Twitter replies by having an employee print them out, writing his responses on the paper, and then having the employee send them on his behalf.
Those tendencies make it all the more striking that Trump has embraced some of Silicon Valley’s least consumer-friendly creations. The president announced last week that he had endorsed the release of “Trump Memes,” a personal cryptocurrency project. It quickly ballooned to a whopping $30 billion valuation. The following day his wife, Melania, released a similar coin that saw a similar meteoric rise in price.
What is a “Trump Meme”? Like any cryptocurrency, it is a digital token that can be traded and sold to other users on the blockchain, a digital ledger of sorts that creates a public record of every transaction. The website is careful to never refer to the tokens as “coins.” Instead it exclusively describes them as “memes.” All of the tokens are hosted on the Solana blockchain.
OK, you might ask at this point, but what is it, really? Why did Trump and his wife create these things? Why would anyone buy them? What’s the point?
Those are very good questions that cut to the heart of the cryptocurrency dilemma. And the potential answers that they raise on Trump’s end aren’t reassuring ones. If nothing else, it might be the perfect Trump product.
The $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins are a venture of the Trump Organization, the president’s family business, as well as two LLCs of unclear ownership. The official website says that 80 percent of the coins are held by CIC Digital LLC, while 10 percent are distributed to the general public and 10 percent are held as liquidity. Up to a billion coins will be gradually “created” over the next three years before an artificial cap is set on the total number in existence.
That structure is extremely favorable to the coin’s creators and initial adopters. Some cryptocurrency projects, like bitcoin and etherium, were created as an alternative medium of exchange in the wake of the Great Recession and the financial crisis. Others, like dogecoin and a variety of other “memecoins,” do not pretend to have an actual purpose. Purchasers acquire them solely because they might one day be worth more than they paid for them.
This approach to investing can lead to disastrous effects for consumers. Last fall, for example, a young woman who went viral on the internet for a fellatio joke created a memecoin based on her signature phrase. It reached nearly $500 million in market capitalization before losing nearly all of its value. She has denied accusations of a “rug pull,” meaning that she and other early adopters would have sold at the peak and essentially “pulled the rug” out from under others who poured thousands into it. But it’s telling that such schemes are so common that the crypto community has lingo to describe them. The Trump coins’ website has a three-month window where initial adopters can’t sell them, apparently in hopes of defraying these concerns.
Both of the Trump cryptocurrencies are targeted at the president’s most fervent supporters. They are encouraged to buy the coins to take part in “a community celebrating courage and strength,” by the coin’s official website. The $TRUMP coin’s artwork depicts a highly stylized image of the president with his fist in the air and the caption “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT,” echoing his reaction to the assassination attempt last July. “This Trump Meme celebrates a leader who doesn’t back down, no matter the odds,” it boasted.
The fine print on the official website emphasizes the symbolic nature of the coin—and claims it is not an investment opportunity at all. “Trump Memes are intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol ‘$TRUMP’ and the associated artwork, and are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type,” it stated. “GetTrumpMemes.com is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign or any political office or governmental agency.”
The website’s terms and conditions are even more explicit about the risks involved for buyers. “Please be aware that the price of Trump Memes may be extremely volatile and you may experience substantial losses in connection with a sale or other disposition of Trump Memes,” they explained. “We make absolutely no promise or guarantee that the Trump Memes will increase in value or maintain the same value as the amount you paid to purchase same.” For a digital asset that does nothing, produces nothing, and represents a share in nothing, this should be a blinking red warning light.
Naturally, disclaimers that an investment may lose value are standard across the financial industry. But the assertion that these are simply a fun community-building tool instead of a financial product are unconvincing. At least one investment firm has already filed paperwork to create an ETF, or exchange-traded fund, that would hold some amount of the $TRUMP coins. That would allow more conventional investors to get a slice of the action without holding the coins themselves. The Securities and Exchange Commission had long resisted ETFs for cryptocurrency products but has since relented: In January it loosened the rules for bitcoin-related products, and again in October for other cryptocurrencies.
This is not Trump’s first brush with selling cryptocurrencies. Last year, he appeared on a livestream to endorse World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm owned and operated by his two elder sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, and two crypto industry figures. Trump’s expression of support was, well, somewhat lackluster. “Crypto is one of those things we have to do,” he reportedly said. “Whether we like it or not, I have to do it.” But this relative warmness still stood in sharp contrast with the more skeptical approach taken by the Biden administration and federal regulatory agencies to crypto projects in general.
For that reason, the crypto industry went all in on the 2024 election. Top Silicon Valley venture capitalists, many of whom have backed crypto-related projects, backed Trump publicly after the assassination attempt last July. Crypto-related PACs spent an estimated $135 million on dozens of congressional races in hopes of tilting the legislative landscape in their favor. Trump has rewarded their support by promising to aggressively pursue pro-crypto policies, by nominating pro-crypto officials to lead the nation’s financial regulators, and by appointing venture capitalist David Sacks as his administration’s “crypto and AI czar.”
Trump’s tech averseness means he is likely personally uninterested in things like blockchains and tokens. But the president knows better than anyone how to market a worthless product. He paid millions in penalties a decade ago for his controversial Trump University courses, which purported to teach real estate secrets to prospective students but fell well short of their promises. His presidential campaigns have often centered on undeliverable promises to his fervent supporters.
And while Trump’s supporters are the market (or, potentially, the marks) for this latest venture, these arrangements should raise red flags for others as well. Cryptocurrencies are famously used as a means to bypass traditional financial institutions. A presidential memecoin raises the possibility that foreign countries could have secret, off-the-books financial relationships with Trump, potentially violating the foreign emoluments clause. It potentially allows wealthy backers to boost the president’s net worth and curry his favor, evading traditional financial disclosures. And it creates an inherent conflict of interest as his administration sets out to create a favorable regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies in general.
In the short term, however, it will have the sharpest negative effects on his own supporters. The $TRUMP coin peaked at just over $74 on January 19; it has since tapered down to around $39 as of Friday. As a digital token with no inherent value or function, it is unlikely to reach those highs again. The president wasn’t lying when he described the coin as an “expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol ‘$TRUMP.’” Those who supported him enough to buy the coin will likely find out what that means the hard way.
