“Trump’s meme coin [is] the most unethical, most corrupt thing a President of the United States has ever done”
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)
Conflict of interest can take a number of forms. In this case the conflict refers to the President’s interest vs that of his constituents, the citizens of the United States. A typical example of such a conflict could be the President making decisions that favor another party (or another government) based on money received from that party or government.
Another example of a conflict of interest is the selling of assets, the value of which is due to some association with the US Presidency. In order to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest, Presidents typically put their assets into a trust that they don’t have control over, for the duration of their terms, or sell these assets completely when there’s a possibility of conflict.
Trump’s family set up a company called World Liberty Financial (WLF) to manage their cryptocurrency operations. The Trump family (including the President) has a large stake in WLF and receives the majority of recurring revenue associated with buying WLF cryptocurrencies, one of which is a meme coin called “$Trump”.
A “meme coin” is a token with no real intrinsic value that’s used as a tradable asset, like a piece of sports memorabilia. These tokens are sold and then resold as interest in them increases. Their trade value is often determined by outside factors, such as being associated with a sports figure, a film star or other famous-named person (like a sitting president?). The more interest the coin can garner, the higher its value. Since WLF has a sizable stock of these coins (they only released 20% of the 1 billion they planned to make), a rising market price for the coin increases their total value for WLF.
But price appreciation isn’t the only way to make money on meme coins. They also generate a small fee, paid to the coin’s creator, for every transaction. The $Trump meme coin has generated more than $320 million in fees for WLF. But the President has done something to stoke demand for the coins as well.
Trump announced a contest where the top 220 owners of this meme coin would be invited to a private dinner at Trump’s golf club in the DC area. The top 25 can also attend a private reception with the President before the dinner. This contest has driven demand for the coins as buyers have sought access to the President. This offer of private time with the President if you buy enough of his meme coins looks to be a blatant “pay for play” – or pay for influence scheme. Here is what two Democratic Senators said about Trump’s cryptocurrency scheme (from Rolling Stone):
“The sitting president appears to be selling personal cryptocurrency while in office, granting access to people who buy it, and thereby enriching his business and his family. It’s gobsmacking,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) told Politico in a statement. “I’d like to hear one Republican senator defend it. Any self-respecting Congress would demand an accounting of everyone trading this coin who has any business before the government.”
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) continues from his statement above: [Trump’s meme coin is] “essentially a way for any corporate CEO, any Saudi prince, any foreign oligarch who has business before the Trump administration to send Trump money privately, secretly, and then whisper to the Trump administration about how much money they’ve sent and the favor that they need.”
For most, holding any public office is a service to the nation. For this President it seems to be just another way to make a few (million) bucks.