On a broader scale, Prasad wrote:
These actions highlight the Trump family’s all-out embrace of different aspects of crypto, from the creation to the securitization of crypto-related assets. From the mining of Bitcoin to issuance of their own meme coins and stablecoins, there is no corner of this industry that Trump seems to want to leave unexploited as an opportunity for personal profit.
Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard, cited as a key example of Trump’s profiteering the president’s announcement on April 23 that the top “220 Special $TRUMP Meme Coin Holders will be Invited to an unforgettable Gala DINNER with the President on May 22, 2025.”
As a special enticement to stock up on the coins, Trump added:
FOR THE TOP 25 COIN HOLDERS, YOU are Invited to an Exclusive Reception before Dinner with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT! PLUS, We have separately arranged for a Special VIP Tour for you — so make sure you stay in town.
The value of the $Trump coin rose to $15.62 on April 26, from $9.22 on April 22, the day before Trump’s announcement, a 69.4 percent increase in four days, according to Coinbase, although this was still below the heights it reached earlier this year.
Trump’s offer, Lessig wrote,
drove up the value of the meme coin, again enabling profit both from sales of the appreciated coin and the transactions that drove the profit up. All of this is unprecedented, whatever the law, because no president so blatantly has tried to benefit personally financially from his acts while president.
Joel Khalili, who writes for Wired, was even more outspoken. In his May 1 article, “Trump’s Quest for Crypto Riches Is a Constitutional Scandal Waiting to Happen,” Khalili wrote:
When Donald Trump agreed to attend a dinner with the largest investors in his own brand cryptocurrency, he transformed the TRUMP coin into something else entirely: a means of access to the sitting president. As a consequence, Trump could find himself at odds with constitutional prohibitions of bribery and corruption, experts claim.
“In creating the opportunity for anybody with sufficient wealth to purchase an audience,” Khalili continued, “Trump risks falling foul of a part of the U.S. Constitution — the emoluments clauses — that prohibit the president from accepting gifts or financial compensation from foreign and domestic state actors.”
Let’s look a little more deeply into the legal and constitutional issues raised by Trump’s cryptocurrency enterprise: On May 1, Zach Witkoff, one of the founders of the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced at the Token 2429 Conference in Dubai that Abu Dhabi would use the firm’s “stablecoin” — USD1 — to finance a $2 billion investment in Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world.
The transaction, my Times colleague David Yaffe-Bellany wrote, “would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family.”
