Among the most vocal critics of TRUMP, the controversial and wildly popular memecoin launched by Donald Trump on the eve of his 2025 inauguration, are the very crypto enthusiasts he may have hoped to court.

The TRUMP coin, launched on Jan. 17, saw a dramatic price surge, climbing from $7 to an all-time high of $75 within 24 hours before settling at $38. While the token’s volatile trajectory has minted a few overnight millionaires, it has also drawn sharp criticism from industry insiders.
Two days after TRUMP’s debut, MELANIA, a coin endorsed by First Lady Melania Trump, entered the market. Unlike its predecessor, MELANIA has struggled, starting around $7 and plummeting below $4 after a briefly peaking at $14.
The potential for conflicts of interest has been a focal point of the backlash, with critics — including members of the U.S. senate — raising concerns that the token could enable individuals to curry favor with the president.
Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House communications director turned crypto advocate, voiced his apprehensions on X (formerly Twitter): “The most perilous aspect of Trump coin for the nation is what follows. Now, anyone globally can effectively deposit money into the bank account of the President of the United States with just a few clicks. Every favor—be it geopolitical, corporate, or personal—is now openly for sale.”

The decision to launch a memecoin has also sparked broader criticism within the crypto industry. While memecoins have become a prominent use-case for blockchain technology, many developers argue they reinforce a get-rich-quick perception that undermines the sector’s credibility.
Gabor Gurbacs, founder of digital asset firm Pointsville, posted on X: “Trump needs to dismiss his crypto advisors, from top to bottom.”
Nic Carter, a general partner at a crypto investment firm and a vocal Trump supporter, was similarly scathing: “It’s absolutely preposterous that he would do this,” he told Politico. “They’re plumbing new depths of idiocy with the memecoin launch.”
Specific concerns have been raised about the coin’s distribution. 80% of TRUMP tokens are concentrated in a small number of blockchain addresses controlled by CNC Digital, the firm that launched the coin. Such concentration is a hallmark of potential “pump-and-dump” schemes, where insiders inflate a token’s value before selling off their holdings, leaving other investors with losses.
There’s no evidence that Trump’s team plans to “dump” its tokens. Nicolas Vaiman, CEO of blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps, noted to CoinDesk that the distribution of TRUMP tokens at least matched what was outlined on its official website. Additionally, the insider-held tokens align with prior distributions of Trump’s NFT trading cards, which were also managed by CNC Digital, meaning the tokens may be reserved for the president’s NFT holders.
The same transparency does not apply to MELANIA, however. About 89% of MELANIA tokens are controlled by insiders, according to Bubblemaps. The on-chain supply does not match an official distribution breakdown on the token’s website, which earmarked 35% of tokens for “public distribution” and “community.”

Vaiman said the First Lady’s memecoin has cast a shadow over the original TRUMP coin: “TRUMP could have been a statement from President Trump saying, ‘I endorse crypto,’” Vaiman said. “Melania launching her tokens feels like they just want to make as much money as they can on this, and then forget about it. It gives this a different flavor.”
This is not the first time the crypto community has questioned Trump’s forays into the industry. In August, Trump and his sons launched World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a platform that promised to develop a lending product. The project drew backlash for pre-selling tokens before delivering any tangible value, and critics were quick to point out the involvement of a former dating coach and memecoin promoter on the WLFI team, as well as the allocation of a percentage of presale proceeds directly to a Trump-controlled company.
The conflict-of-interest potential was also immediately apparent. Tron blockchain-founder Justin Sun recently became WLFI’s largest investor, making a $30 million purchase of the project’s tokens. In an X post on Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr. announced that World Liberty Financial would acquire some of Tron’s TRX tokens for its treasury.
A Hong Kong-based crypto billionaire, Sun was previously charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission — a department now under the control of Trump’s White House.

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Sentiment towards Ethereum’s ether (ETH) has sunk to depressed levels in recent times, but the latest maneuver of President Donald Trump-related crypto platform could spur hope for a reversal.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform linked to the Trump family, this week deposited a total of 10,000 ether (ETH) worth $33 million to liquid staking platform Lido Finance (LDO) to stake and earn rewards, blockchain data by Arkham Intelligence showed. Lido is the largest ether staking platform with $31 billion of assets posted on the platform.

The transactions came after World Liberty Finance acquired more than $110 million worth of crypto assets including ETH, wrapped bitcoin (wBTC), Tron’s TRX, AAVE, LINK and Ethena’s ENA, as CoinDesk reported.

The maneuver raises hopes that regulators will soon allow staking for spot ETH exchange-traded funds. SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce, who now leads the agency’s crypto task force, said last month in an interview with Coinage that she was open to considering staking for ETFs. Former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, known for his anti-crypto stance in the industry, stepped down on January 20 with Trump entering office.
Staking would boost appeal for the investment products, letting investors earn a steady stream of yield on their holdings and reducing product fees. U.S. spot ETH ETFs combined hold $12 billion of assets, according to SoSoValue data.
The potential regulatory approval also could jolt ETH’s price and adjacent ecosystem tokens like Lido’s LDO. Ethereum’s future has been under the microscope recently, amid sagging prices relative to competitors, leadership disputes and worries over the project’s development roadmap. ETH recently dropped to a 4-year low price against bitcoin (BTC) and ceded market share in trading activity to rapidly growing blockchains like Solana.
“I will never trade ETH again after, but watch how quickly the sentiment changes when the staked ETH ETFs come through in the next few weeks,” well-followed crypto trader Pentoshi said.
“ETH will have a multi-week giga pump at some point in 2025, around staking ETF news… If [you’re] too long ETH, that’s when you dump and switch to better performing assets,” said Alex Krüger, partner at Asgard Markets, in an X post.

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