According to a Jan. 22nd report by the Financial Times, crypto industry leaders are raising serious concerns about the chaos caused by TRUMP and MELANIA, the controversial memecoins launched by ‘crypto president’ Donald Trump and his wife the weekend before his Monday inauguration.
Nic Carter for instance, founding partner of Castle Island Ventures, reportedly said, “Call me old-fashioned, but I think presidents should focus on running the country.”
Nic, who’s actually a vocal Trump supporter, also flagged the conflict of interest, pointing out that the president’s position allows him to influence crypto regulations while directly benefiting from the trading of his tokens.
The meme coins were initially worth a combined $17.5 billion, per data from CoinGecko. But by midweek, both had lost more than half their value, leaving thousands of investors reeling and raising questions about ethics, conflicts of interest, and the impact on the industry’s reputation.
Data from CoinMarketCap reveals that most trading activity for the 200 million available TRUMP tokens happened on lesser-known Asian exchanges like BiKing, Gate.io, and Megabit.
“Human nature never changes,” a Silicon Valley investor reportedly told the Financial Times at the World Economic Forum in Davos, likening Trump and Elon Musk to Crassus and Caesar. The investor described the memecoins as a modern example of using political influence for personal gain.
“We are seeing real ‘End of Empire’ stuff in the U.S.,” they added, referencing the rapid creation of billions in paper wealth and its equally rapid collapse.
About 80% of the TRUMP tokens are held by CIC Digital, a Trump Organization-affiliated company, and Fight Fight Fight LLC, another entity linked to the president. Both companies are set to benefit from trading revenues and token sales, as insiders’ holdings will unlock for sale over the next three to 12 months.
Lawmakers and executives call out ethical issues
According to the report, Maxine Waters, Democratic congresswoman and member of the House Financial Services Committee, said, “This meme coin represents the worst of crypto.”
Waters argued that $TRUMP could enable anonymous financial transactions to Trump’s inner circle, bypassing national security and anti-corruption laws.
Oskar Åslund, chief strategy officer at AKJ, a crypto hedge fund brokerage, said, “His economic interest is for sale. There are no checks and balances here.” Åslund also warned about the lack of protections for retail investors, adding that terms on the token’s website prevent users from filing class-action lawsuits.
Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital and former White House communications director, expressed concern that $TRUMP could derail efforts to establish regulatory clarity for crypto. “I believe it hurts the industry,” he said during a Davos panel.
Meanwhile, Serge-Raymond Nzabandora of Yield Guild Games described the tokens as a drain on resources and attention. “The immediate effect has been draining liquidity and attention away from legitimate projects working on real use cases that the industry desperately needs to prove to the world in 2025,” he said.
Nzabandora also pointed out the irony of Trump’s actions, as they appear to undermine the very regulatory protections former SEC chair Gary Gensler sought to establish.
Adding fuel to the fire, REX Financial and Osprey Funds filed paperwork with the SEC for an exchange-traded fund (ETF) centered on the $TRUMP token. The proposed fund would allow investors to trade the memecoin more easily, but it has already faced backlash.
“These are the first filings we’ve seen for memecoin ETFs in the U.S.,” said James Seyffart, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. He questioned the wisdom of launching an ETF for a token created just days ago, especially one tied to a sitting president.
“I’m not sure even a libertarian-minded and Republican-controlled SEC will want to approve these products,” James added.
Meanwhile, more than 30 new crypto ETFs are in the pipeline, including filings for funds focused on Solana and XRP. ProShares and CoinShares are among the firms seeking to capitalize on the change in US SEC leadership. But according to James, “These filings are a gamble.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with Bloomberg, Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood said that TRUMP is a meme coin. She did not buy it herself because she only holds Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. However, she believes that the token isn’t “completely worthless.”
“It may symbolize a new stage of the cryptocurrency revolution and have certain practicality in the future,” she said. Cathie is well beloved in the crypto community as one of Bitcoin’s earliest and strongest believers.
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