Trump is a businessman, crypto degens should know better

What a weekend it has been for Donald Trump and his family; they’ve actually made the crypto market their personal circus by launching memecoin after memecoin. Every corner of crypto social media is hosting fierce debates between “this is going to end badly” and the investor optimism of “Trump is big for crypto.”

We’re only getting started. 

Since Friday, January 17, we’ve seen an Inaugural Crypto Ball event attended by industry leaders, and President-elect Trump and his wife Melania have launched their own memecoins, TRUMP and MELANIA.

We can’t deny that in recent months, even beyond the last three days, some “lucky” investors have made a fortune, just as Trump promised during his campaign period. But does the incoming POTUS have the industry’s best interest at heart? You should know better by now; it is and has always been about business.

Memecoins are dangerous gambles; what about TRUMP and MELANIA?

Several industry experts, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, have long called memecoins assets that are “notoriously over-reliant” on social media hype and volatile value swings with no utility whatsoever. And really, looking at the price trend of tokens like DOGE and PEPE, it’s hard to argue with that sentiment; their prices rose because the memes were trendy.

The Official Trump token debuted on Friday, and within 24 hours, its market cap soared to $15 billion. Even Melania’s memecoin, released about 48 hours later, saw its market cap jump past $5 billion hours after launch. 

The pro-TRUMP community would give you tons and tons of explanations to warrant how all that happened. However, if they attribute it to anything other than hype, don’t believe them.   

According to tokenomics details shared by netizens on social media, both projects have more than 80% of their total tokens held in addresses believed to be owned by the development team. If it were any other token or any other personality, the red flags would be unignorable. 

The utility question does not have any watertight answers either. 

Enthusiasm at the expense of financial gain 

Since Trump’s electoral victory in November, the number of new memecoins has surged, as crypto enthusiasts are banking on a more favorable regulatory environment under his administration. However, the timing of these Trump-affiliated token launches, just hours before his inauguration ceremony, overtly screams predatory behavior.

No surprise the New York Times only used the negative part of my post on Trumpcoin

Trumpcoin is great. It signals the end of the Biden era of establishment control and the start of crypto innovation flourishing in the U.S. Just hope they put 80% of the supply to good use. pic.twitter.com/ExZnfVEeLR

— Nick Tomaino (@NTmoney) January 19, 2025

It could also be that the Trump family knows how the crypto market reacts to “certain conditions,” in regard to memecoins. 

The man is set to assume responsibilities as the 47th President of the US on Monday. He obviously will be restricted from influencing markets in any kind of way. So what does he do? He launches these memecoins as fast as anyone can say pump-and-dump, and by the time he enters the Oval Office, money is already in his pockets.

There’s a developing pattern with Donald Trump; if a crypto initiative doesn’t directly benefit him, even if it’s a federal Bitcoin reserve, then he won’t actually push for it.

The Trump family’s growing crypto interests 

If there’s anything we’ve learned from Hailey Welch’s HAWK and Justice for Peanut coin stories, it is that memecoins are all about fun and games. At least, until they are not.

Jokes have made the rounds on social media about every member of the Trump family launching meme tokens. A time could come when it’s no longer funny.

LIVE: Donald Trump just announced the next meme coins soon to be launched:$TRUMP $BARRON $MELANIA pic.twitter.com/m1nRCFlRk2

— MAKE CRYPTO GREAT AGAIN (@cryptobergmann) January 20, 2025

Both Melania and Trump’s memecoins have been branded as “digital collectibles,” framed as expressions of their values rather than an investment opportunity. However, naysayers, including Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former communications director, have denounced the family’s foray into memecoins, calling it harmful to the crypto industry’s credibility.

“Launch of Melania coin is causing Trump coin to crash. Elon was right, we are living in a simulation. Which one of the kids coins will perform best? The day before inauguration as leader of free world and this is what Trump is focused on. Tells you everything you need to know,” said Scaramucci on X.

For Trump, crypto could be about decentralized finance or technological innovation, but all that is just what the “mainstream media” tells you; it’s all about the profits.

Jonathan Bixby, a crypto entrepreneur, told Bloomberg that the launches could herald a “banana zone” in which celebrity-backed tokens flood the market, and that could cause people to lose a lot of money.

Trump needs to fire his crypto advisors, from top to bottom and replace with people who know what they are doing. The memecoins cost the US, the presidency and his family a lot of credibility and the consequences haven’t even started.

— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) January 20, 2025

The sentiments were also echoed by Gabor Gurbacs, VanEck’s former digital-asset strategy director, who shared his thoughts on X, saying that the consequences of these launches “have not even started.”

Crypto stakeholders should watch out 

Launching tokens without a business model or intrinsic value only means one thing: Trump and his family have reinforced stereotypes about them making everything business. This time, it is at the expense of the crypto industry.

All of us will finally regret that Donald Trump got involved with crypto

Lmao 🤣

A day to inauguration, he has used his own memecoin $trump to wreck other crypto aside from $sol and $btc

This is so dangerous, no man is suppose to be that powerful in crypto

Crazy

— dream chaser jtk (@dreamchaserjtk) January 19, 2025

Crypto could be merely another avenue to expand the incoming US President’s business empire. The general sentiment is that any initiative that doesn’t serve his personal or financial interests is unlikely to go far during his presidency. 

The president-elect does not draw from the same source of fanatics within the crypto community; the crypto industry would do better to recognize this and focus on projects that prioritize long-term value and credibility over short-term hype.

In the end, if the crypto sector wants to be taken seriously, it must strike a balance between the spectacle of price surges from politically and fame-ridden memecoins, and cryptos that offer real utility. Otherwise, we will continue seeing court cases about huge losses from proclaimed “pump-and-dump” schemes; a little DYOR goes a long way, people.