Trump Launches TRUMP Meme Coin a Day Before His Inauguration, Sparking Backlash

While everyone is anticipating Trump's incoming takeover of the White House, the US President-elect surprised the cryptocurrency community by launching his own meme coin on the Solana blockchain.

A day before assuming the role of the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump made waves in the cryptocurrency realm, not for his upcoming inauguration on January 20, but for launching a controversial meme coin named after himself.

Launched on January 17, the crypto token, dubbed as the TRUMP meme coin, sparked a significant amount of discussion and is currently facing backlash for what critics have called a questionable venture by the incoming President.

Critics Slam Launch of TRUMP Meme Coin

As everyone awaits Trump's impending takeover of the White House, the US President-elect surprised the cryptocurrency community by launching his own meme coin on the Solana blockchain. This move has now ignited a firestorm of criticism, questioning the ethics of an American president launching his meme coin.

Popular YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, also known as Coffeezilla, believes that the launching, which is only days before Trump’s inauguration, is off-timing, considering Trump will be appointing the new Chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

dropping TRUMP memecoin 2 days before becoming president is nasty work

new SEC/DOJ guarantees no prosecution

80% of tokens vest to insiders DURING the presidency

most ppl losing money will be MAGA who aren’t crypto native

*should* be a crime but crime is legal now ig?

— Coffeezilla (@coffeebreak_YT) January 18, 2025

“Dropping TRUMP memecoin 2 days before becoming president is nasty work. New SEC/DOJ guarantees no prosecution,” Findeisen stated in his X post.

Other critics questioned Trump's new venture, which they believe blurs the lines between government and business. Even Trump's former aide, Anthony Scaramucci, slammed the new meme coin, calling it a form of “corruption” and arguing that the Trump token could negatively impact the broader digital asset market.

The Trump meme coin stuff is bad for the industry. Don’t delude yourself. It’s Idi Amin level corruption.

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) January 18, 2025

Profiteering Effort?

Campaign Legal Center executive director Adav Noti accused Trump of using the presidency for his personal gain, suggesting that the TRUMP meme coin could be viewed as a profiteering attempt. According to reports, around 80% of the tokens will be allocated to individuals within the incoming president's circle.

“It is literally cashing in on the presidency — creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office. It is beyond unprecedented,” Noti told the New York Times.

The new meme coin also rubbed some figures in the cryptocurrency industry the wrong way, who viewed it as a predatory tactic.

“Trump owning 80 percent and timing launch hours before inauguration is predatory and many will likely get hurt by it,” former Coinbase executive Nick Tomaino stated in a post.

TRUMP Coin Surges

Analysts noted that the new Trump-themed token took only 15 minutes to achieve a market capitalization of $400 million, adding that the meme coin also pushed Solana’s native token SOL to an all-time high of $267.

Ok yeah the new Trump memecoin website is deployed almost identically to his previous NFT website.

Same cloudflare setup, same deployment with Heroku, same SSL certificate issuer.

Very similar HTML structure as before. pic.twitter.com/u1zLD7Vcv7

— cygaar (@0xCygaar) January 18, 2025

Despite the backlash, data also showed that the new meme coin recorded over 12,000% adoption since it was launched.

According to market observers, the coin’s value briefly touched $35 before settling at around $29, and several crypto traders recorded gains, with one investor reportedly increasing their investment of $50,000 to $1.1 million within a few hours.

However, it remains to be seen what the future holds for the token, considering that only 20% of the 1 billion TRUMP coins are currently in circulation. The remaining 80% of the tokens will be released over the next three years.

Featured image from The Nation, chart from TradingView