A Specific Worry Grows Over Trump's Crypto Coin

Just before he became president again, Donald Trump launched a cryptocurrency coin called $TRUMP, one that has made him billions on paper. The launch of what's known as a memecoin has critics pointing to potential ethical issues, and one in particular appears to be gaining traction—the role of foreign buyers in the loosely regulated industry:

• Wall Street Journal: The newspaper's conservative editorial page worries that a "business or foreign official with interests before the federal government might seek to curry favor with Mr. Trump by announcing plans to buy millions of his token to pump up the price." The editorial warns Trump won't be able to escape accusations of "presidential self-dealing"—he now controls crypto regulation, after all—and wonders where his lawyers were when this particular venture launched.

• Post columnist: Catherine Rampell raises the same concern in a Washington Post op-ed. "For the next four years, there may be one reliable source of ongoing $TRUMP buyers: individuals, companies, and foreign governments that want to curry favor with the president," she writes. "This memecoin has now become the easiest, most convenient way to do that. The Saudis no longer need to stay at one of Trump's hotels—or merely pretend to —to line the president's pockets; they can flash their digital wallet to show how much they've boosted his net worth."
• Ditto: A story in Time on all this quotes Puja Ohlhaver, a lawyer affiliated with Harvard's Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, voicing the same worry. "These coins open a channel for him to receive financial benefits from foreign adversaries and to prioritize his personal interests, to the collective detriment of Americans."
• Another worry: The general vibe among many big players in the world of crypto, who've pushed to make digital currency more legitimate in recent years, is that the launch of $TRUMP (as well as $MELANIA) threatens to undercut that legitimacy because they look so gimmicky, reports the Atlantic. Ordinary investors might well lose money here. The Trump coin "exposed the worst parts of the crypto industry to the public eye in a way that really didn't need to happen, right when we were on the cusp of legitimacy," says Nic Carter, a Trump supporter and crypto investor.

(More cryptocurrency stories.)