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When Trump climbed into bed with the cryptocurrency industry, it was a match that ethics experts warned was a perfect storm. A president who has nearly three dozen criminal convictions for fraud now had a mechanism that is a favorite of fraudsters for making money and the platforms of the White House and the presidency to exploit, which is exactly what has happened.
Sen. Chris Murphy’s office provided a timeline of Trump’s meme coin corruption:
On January 17th, three days before the inauguration, President Donald Trump launched $TRUMP, a meme coin or digital asset with no inherent value. The coin was initially only worth a few cents, but it exploded in value upon limited release and drove Trump’s net worth temporarily north of $50 billion. Each time the coin is released and traded, Trump makes money from trading fees, and he and his family have made more than $100 million from these fees. There is no way to know who is buying the coin, which leaves the door wide open for billionaires, Russian oligarchs, and Saudi princes to secretly purchase $TRUMP and directly enrich the president in order to curry favor.
Last month, Trump’s team announced the top 220 meme coin holders would be invited for an exclusive dinner with the president and the top 25 coin holders would get a “Special VIP Tour” of the White House. After that message went up, the price of $TRUMP jumped more than 50 percent and its market value soared to $2.7 billion. In just two days following the announcement of the dinner, Trump and his allies made nearly $900,000 in trading fees alone.
This is a brazen abuse of power and position for self-enrichment, and Sen. Chris Murphy is trying to put a stop to it with The MEME Act.
What is the MEME Act, and what would it do? Read below to find out.