On the evening of January 17 president-elect Trump and his family started selling a block chain crypto meme token featuring an image of him lifted from the July assassination attempt.
Disclosed
mere days before his second inauguration this venture is the latest in a
long line of hustles to monetize his followers and enrich his family.
It is yet another sign that the Trumps will take every opportunity in
his second term to push the edge of the self-dealing envelope.
The Trump meme coin is his latest and likely most successful yet.
You're likely wondering why the President is laughing all the way to the bank.
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photo credit - Al Jazeera |
That's because if you borrowed against your 401K, mortgaged your home, cashed-in all your frumpy, dumpy, boring stocks, bonds and mutual
funds and purchased as many Trump meme coins as you could get your
hands-on there's a possibility you made a killing. As well, there is a possibility your got your ass kicked. Further evidence that PT Barnum was prescient.
Only moments following the president-elect posting on his social media account that his family had issued a crypto currency named $Trump a trade was placed. In the amount of $1,096,109, from a crypto wallet with a unique identification code beginning with 6QSc2Cx, someone acquired a boatload of the Trump tokens - 5,971,750 to be exact - at the opening price of 18 cents apiece. This launched a run up in the price of $Trump that would swell to $75 a token.
With a balance of only 25 tokens remaining this anonymous trader pocketed as much a $109 million according to an analysis performed for The New York Times.
The front-end profits for the unidentified early traders, including possibly some from China, was at the expense of the much larger number of schmucks late to the game who lost more than $2 billion following the crash of the token's price.
While trading in the meme coin space is relatively new - what is described in the preceding paragraph is as old as the hills. In the vernacular of the stock-trading world this is known as Pump and Dump - with early traders pumping-up the price and them dumping their positions as less sophisticated individuals get in late to the game. Illegal in a regulated market this scam is all to common in the unregulated crypto world.
It is one thing for
the Trump family to profit from crypto trading; it is also worth noting
that the President holds executive sway over the relevant federal regulatory world. Rolling-back victim protections and enforcement is one thing; leaving the fox to guard the hen house is altogether another.
Coincidentally, only ten days ago The Lever reported that the Trump administration issued a blanket ethics waiver to venture capitalist David Sacks, now the president's special advisor for artificial intelligence and crypto, clearing him to work on regulatory issues directly related to his financial holdings. The waiver comes a month after President Trump fired the Senate-confirmed director of the Office of Government Ethics - the independent agency responsible for enforcing federal ethics laws.
'I am granting you a waiver...of any conflict of interest regarding particular matters of general applicability concerning the digital asset industry' - reads the March 5 memo from White House Counsel David Warrington.
The creation of a financial instrument facilitating the transfer of money
to the president's family in connection with his office interests me. The Trump
meme coin is ideally suited as a mechanism for, hypothetically-speaking, special interests or a foreign
government to influence the President and his family.
The fact that his office's regulatory actions may now shield or insulate him from both scrutiny and consequences interests me even more.
How about you?