Opinion: $TRUMP is a Big Mistake, and a Threat to Crypto

It’s been covered on national news, listed on Coinbase, and caused the crypto world to completely lose its s***.

But make no mistake: the president launching his own meme coin is spectacularly stupid — and it will backfire.

The $TRUMP token has only been around for three days, but its price chart already looks like a hellish rollercoaster.

There’s no doubt that impressionable and inexperienced consumers — some of them opportunistic, others in awe of their new commander-in-chief — have already lost a hell of a lot of money.

And while some of them may feel angry, aggrieved and short-changed given $TRUMP has already plunged more than 40% from all-time highs, there’s very little they can do about it.

Why? Because buried in the terms and conditions is a waiver that prohibits anyone who buys this coin from entering into a class action and seeking damages.

Legitimate questions are also being raised about flagrant conflicts of interest given Trump’s vows to embark on a deregulation spree, which could cause significant levels of investor harm in years to come.

While X went into meltdown and degens entered a state of euphoria, a growing chorus of critics started to unpack just some of the countless ways a presidential token could end in disaster.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the most senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, was bound to find $TRUMP in poor taste — but still raises a serious point.

“Trump has created a way to circumvent national security and anti-corruption laws, allowing interested parties to anonymously transfer money to him and his inner circle. Buyers could include large corporations, allied nations who are pressed to show their ‘respect’ for the President, and our adversaries, like Russia and China.”

Anthony Scaramucci, a former Trump insider who was one of the first to condemn this token’s launch, went one further — describing it as a “clearing house for bribery.”

For me, the biggest threat that $TRUMP poses is to crypto itself… for many reasons.

In the weeks and months ahead, this meme coin could end up trading like a barometer for how voters are feeling about the president’s performance — rallying when he does something right, and crashing when there’s a controversy.

Given Trump is renowned for having a pretty thin skin, it’s very possible he could sour on crypto altogether if $TRUMP becomes worthless — and lose enthusiasm for delivering the much-needed regulatory clarity that this industry needs.

And while crypto legislation has started to emerge as a bipartisan issue, this token’s arrival helps reinforce the stereotype of a market that’s rife with pump and dumps, greed and unacceptable risks for hard-working Americans. Key votes could end up becoming much harder to pass.

But more than anything, the fact that Trump has been willing to slap his name on a meme coin — just like he has with everything from casinos to golf clubs — shows that he doesn’t have a deep understanding of what crypto is aiming to achieve, and that he isn’t aligned with Bitcoiners.

The president even admitted he knows little about his own meme coin at a news conference, causing it to plummet once again.

These speculative assets are almost always a flash in the pan — investors quickly move on when the next big shiny thing comes along. They’re like newspapers and plastic cups: useful for a brief period of time, and then discarded quickly. But then again, both of these are actually useful.

When you peel back all the layers, it’s clear to see that Trump’s interest in crypto centers solely on money — whether that’s the cash that’s flowed in from deep-pocketed donors, or the paper billions that his business empire has supposedly made from launching this token.

The weirdest thing of all is that it could prove exceedingly hard for him to extract any profit from $TRUMP without causing its value to crater even further.

U.S. laws state that the president is meant to divest from businesses that could present a conflict of interest during his time in office. The mere fact that he decided to launch this token just two days before his inauguration suggests he doesn’t really care all that much.

For a flavor of what to expect over the next four years, it’s fascinating to note that the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics clocked up a staggering 3,700 conflicts of interest during his first administration.

The crypto industry has been desperate to move on from the endless scandals, controversies and bankruptcies that have left its reputation in tatters — and over the past 12 months, bit by bit, it has been starting to gain a shred of credibility.

But now, its fate is inextricably tied with a man who’s renowned for being volatile, bad-tempered and fickle.

Bitcoiners wanted Trump. Maybe they should have been careful about what they wished for.

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