Trump Picking Your Pocket Again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We get around to wonksplaining the $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins!
A fool and their money, etc etc!
It’s another day, another Trump grift! This time it is a $TRUMP memecoin, as well as a $MELANIA one, to hang out in your digital wallet next to your Trump NFTs, your Trump-endorsed World Liberty Financial $WLFI tokens that you cannot sell or trade, and your Trump Media stock. Oh hey, how’s that going?
Oh.
Anyway, your new Trump memecoins, you can buy them while wearing your Trump Never Surrender sneakers, Trump Victory Tourbillon watch and Melania bouquet-of-scrotums necklace, clutching your Trump Bible, hanging your Trump Christmas ornaments and smelling your Trump FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT cologne, admiring your commemorative gold and silver coins, and your Trump University diploma. Federal ethics rules, what are those? They checked into the Trump International Hotel, and they never checked out.
The acting chairs of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, SEC, acting secretary of the Treasury, and director of the Office of Government Ethics are concerned and wrote a letter, and what else can they do? The Supreme Court and Republican Congress have deemed everything Dear Leader does legal and ethical forever and ever, amen.
Like the hundreds of testicle-themed memecoins on pump dot fun, and Hailey Welch’s $HAWK Tuah coin, Trump’s is on the Solana blockchain. And like any obviously money-losing thing that does not want to run afoul of fraud laws or the SEC, the terms and conditions make clear that it’s just for COMMUNITY and FUN, you guys, with a big fat disclaimer that it is for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY: “Trump Memes are intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol ‘$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.”
The coin is to celebrate his win, but not in any political kind of way, you see, and by the way, if you lose money, you can’t sue. Ha, look how thin and normal-colored he made himself.
Also on the disclaimer:
NEITHER THE TRUMP MEMES NOR THE SERVICES ARE POLITICAL AND HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY POLITICAL CAMPAIGN, GOVERNMENT AGENCY OR GOVERNMENTAL OFFICE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA OR ELSEWHERE.
Uh huh. And: “The Services are not available to (i) individuals or entities (including those owned or controlled by individuals) that are the subject of economic or trade sanctions administered or enforced by any governmental authority or otherwise designated on any list of prohibited or restricted parties.”
So don’t even THINK of pouring money directly to Trump and Melania’s pockets with this, China or Russia! Never mind that wallets being anonymous is the entire point of crypto, just pinkie swear that you are not in a country trying to bribe Trump, okay? In real life, Dear Leader is also playing dumb.
“Will you continue to sell products that benefit yourself personally while you’re president?” asked a reporter at his AI infrastructure announcement press conference last week. “Well, I don’t know if it benefited, I don’t know where it is, I don’t know much about it, other than I launched it. I heard it was very successful, I haven’t checked it,” he vaguely moaned, in his way, about the magic bean venture his companies own 80 percent of.
Like most things Trump, the coin’s price surged $75 within a day, then deflated to $27. And $MELANIA hit a high of $13.38 before plunging to a sad $2.40.
Even the most pro-crypto guys are side-eyeing this. After all, if Trump is serious about making the case that cryptocurrency is just as solid as some kind of government-issued legal tender, so the Federal Reserve ought to liquidate itself to buy Bitcoin, issuing some wildly fluctuating digital “fun” that picks suckers’ pockets within a week is not the way to go about it.
Andy Baehr, managing director and head of product at CoinDesk, to USA Today:
“Our industry is trying very hard to demonstrate that it’s serious, that it welcomes useful regulation, that it wants to be more regulated, that it wants to have serious conversations with regulators and legislators to help improve how finance works, how investing works, how capital raising works, how trading works. And something like this, that is so public and so unavoidably top-of-fold headline, threatens to set back how seriously the conversation is taken.”
How investing works? Memecoins are a game of digital hot potato. There’s no fundamentals behind it, it’s more like the game where you stop the clock to win a beer than buying stock in Ford, and you win by not being the last sucker holding the bag.
Nic Carter, Trump supporter and founding partner of crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures, to Politico: “It’s absolutely preposterous that he would do this. They’re plumbing new depths of idiocy with the memecoin launch.” Another lobbyist: “This is a horrible look for the industry already trying to make the case that we’re not a bunch of hucksters, scammers and fraudsters.”
Well, congrats, cryptobros, you are now the latest zimzams to get flimflammed by the man who’d kick his grandma in the shins if it would make him a buck. At least he let your buddy Ross Ulbricht out of the can?
From the staggering sums involved, I'd say it's more like Russian, Saudi, and Chinese money laundering.
"You guys this is serious!"
Pause
(Audible fart noise)
End scene