Crypto Execs Unamused by Trump Meme Coins
The cryptocurrency industry is a fan of incoming President Donald Trump, but Trump’s new meme coin is a different story.
The new $TRUMP coin sparked criticism from crypto executives who had anticipated that their sector would be treated seriously under the new administration, Bloomberg reported Monday (Jan. 20).
Trump debuted the token Friday (Jan. 17) with his wife Melania introducing her own meme coin the following day.
The meme coin sector is divisive as it fuels criticism that the crypto industry is frivolous and risky, the report said. Meme coins depend on social media momentum that can fade as fast as it materializes.
Balaji Srinivasan, an angel investor and former chief technology officer at Coinbase, posted on social platform X that meme coins are a zero-sum “lottery” where the “price eventually crashes and the last buyers lose everything.”
A memecoin is a zero-sum* lottery.
There is no wealth creation. Every buy order is simply matched by a sell order. And after an initial spike, the price eventually crashes and the last buyers lose everything.
* It’s actually negative sum if the platform takes a cut.
— Balaji (@balajis) January 19, 2025
In a separate post, SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci pointed out that the launch of the Melania coin caused the Trump coin to plummet. Trump’s coin had been valued as high as $15 billion at one point, but briefly dropped to under $8 billion when his wife’s coin debuted, Bloomberg reported.
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.
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) January 19, 2025
Scaramucci is an outspoken critic of Trump, but he served for 10 days in July of 2017 as communications director for the first Trump White House before being fired.
Also on X, Gabor Gurbacs, former head of digital asset strategy at investment provider VanEck and founder of PointsVille, said the Trump meme coins “cost the U.S., the presidency and his family a lot of credibility.”
Gurbacs wrote that the fallout from the launches “haven’t even started” and called on the president-elect to fire his crypto advisers.
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 crypto industry has been banking on the idea that Trump will be friendlier to their sector than his predecessor, with the price of bitcoin hitting record highs ahead of the inauguration.
Last week saw reports that Trump plans to designate cryptocurrency as a national priority and issue an executive order soon after taking office that instructs government agencies to work closely with the crypto industry.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote last week about the role of stablecoins in serving as the bridge between the traditional finance world and the cryptocurrency industry.
