lol who’s still holding this shit
Axios is reporting that the soon-to-be 47th president of the United States has rolled out a “meme coin” dubbed $TRUMP, which is being billed as the “only official Trump meme.” According to Axios, $TRUMP has already accumulated a valuation of roughly $32 billion. And because the Trump Organization is keeping 80% of the coins, this means the president-elect and his businesses are roughly $25 billion richer as a result.
80%. Hmm.
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/19/trump-meme-coin-what-to-know
Reserving 80% of the new supply for the team is an awful lot. It’s usually more like 10% to 30%.
It’d be interesting to see who is buying.
I mean, yeah, one possibility is that it’s supporters getting fleeced here, which is what the article is proposing.
But I suppose, without having a lot of familiarity with the structure here, that it could also be a route to launder funds. Supposing I wanted to bribe the President to do something. If I buy this, I’m increasing the value of the asset, and most of that asset is held by Trump – that’s functionally transferring wealth to Trump’s pockets.
If I buy, say, shares in a publicly-traded company, then the SEC can see what’s going on. But I don’t think that they have direct visibility into who is purchasing coins on a coin exchange.
EDIT: Hmm. Okay, so I’m not really in the loop on this – not something that I’ve been super-interested in – but it does sound like (a) they assert that they do have that ability and (b) exchanges have not been doing so.
https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023-102
SEC Charges Coinbase for Operating as an Unregistered Securities Exchange, Broker, and Clearing Agency Coinbase also charged for the unregistered offer and sale of securities in connection with its staking-as-a-service program.
As alleged in the SEC’s complaint, Coinbase’s failure to register has deprived investors of significant protections, including inspection by the SEC, recordkeeping requirements, and safeguards against conflicts of interest, among others.
Yep, it doesn’t feel like a pump n dump, but very public bribery.
Hard to tell for sure, but it’s got a strange flavour to it.
Time will tell.
I mean, I just don’t have the expertise to say on the legal/regulatory side. Someone who has a background in securities and has been following the cryptocurrency situation would probably be in a better position.
I suppose that there will be people who do have such a background looking at it. The fact that it’s the President – who is in charge of the Executive Branch – and that most media that might be reporting on it has a partisan position makes this a lot more complicated.
Still, wouldn’t be the first time that we’ve run into high-level graft in the Executive Branch. Dealt with it then.
Eventually it’ll dump. I can’t imagine this coin having much utility post-Trump presidency, whenever and however that ends.
It’d be interesting to see who is buying.
Lots of foreign nations. Lots.
This is blatantly a bribery scheme, with untraceability as a feature. Everyone knew it was coming, and there’s nothing to be done about it because the recipient now controls the Justice Dept, which is the only organization that’s likely to have the resources to trace the payments.
It’s all traceable.
Doesn’t matter because the president is immune from the law.
This is clearly “official duties”for Trump lmao
Considering they’re arguing that stuff he did before he even got elected in 2016 counts as “official presidential duties,” it seems nothing is off the table as an official act.
So how can we poison it?
All you need to know about investing in Donald j trump investment vehicles:
- Ryan Cohen a known extreme trump supporter endorsed Donald J Trump within days of crashing the short interest on GameStop Stock by selling billions in shares for cash he did not need as he already had nearly 1 billion saved. He did this to be timed with when the shorts were going to start buying. He betrayed every single one of his long term investors for thieves shorting companies illegally, then turned around and endorsed Donald Drumpf on X(itter). This is Donnie’s game plan, and every single one of his billionaire supporters game plan for how the next 4 yrs is going to go. Do not invest in anything even remotely related to Donald J Trump. It’s more than likely a ponzi scheme, even the viable businesses are just going to pump and dump then leave you holding the bags.
Oh, I didn’t realise he’d outed himself as a piece of shit
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The disclaimer Novak referred to in his skeet (the generally accepted term for a Bluesky post) …
who has accepted this term? i want names
I think most people use skeet as a joke
Wtflol
History from someone who moved to the platform early on:
A lot of the early adopters were the queer and trans community, first to leave Twitter after Musk’s meddling and most sensitive to the changes he was making. (In this context I don’t mean sensitive as in “snowflake”, I mean sensitive as in “aware of inevitable changes and resultant catastrophe” - when someone shits in the pool you don’t wait wait for the water to turn brown). They took the gross out humor and used it as a ward to keep some of the other elements from following over. Now they defend the term as history.
I don’t particularly agree, I understand the basis for it but ugh, it’s still gross. I keep advocating for “bleats” which kind of works as “Bluesky tweet” and leans into us all being sheep; something I find cute and take no offense at because it’s a toothless insult wielded by deeply unserious people. Alternatively, I think we should’ve just straight stolen tweet since the trademark or whatever has been abandoned at this point (???). Failing that, I’ll probably resort to just calling them posts, there’s no point in fighting momentum like this and I imagine it’ll probably settle down onto something else once the platform gets over its first wave of serious growing pains … if it lives that long.
skeet (the generally accepted term for a Bluesky post)
Can we just agree that they are all just “posts”? No more “tweets”, “Toots”, “xeets”, etc… it’s just a post.
On closer inspection the rug has been made with a row of pulleys which were attached to f350’s rolling coal. So you can understand the suprise.
Please correct me: is this nothing but entirely fake money?
Ugh …just don’t if you can’t understand what a ledger is …
Way to explain and not just be an ass. Also, he’s not wrong. It’s a meme coin
Ugh… just don’t if you can’t fuckin answer the question like a normal fucking person. What a smug insufferable prick.
Fake money spends.
All money is “entirely fake”. The only difference is how big the value fluctuations are and to what degree you can exchange it for other currency. Crypto has a big problem with the former and minor problems with the latter, but generally speaking it’s not much less real than, say, the US dollar.
You can’t pay taxes in crypto.
I’m pretty sure people in the EU can’t pay their taxes in USD either, but it doesn’t mean the US dollar is fake. Or it does mean that it’s fake and all other currencies are also fake.
I can’t pay my taxes in rupees, but that’s a legitimate currency.
The Democrats should issue a statement that they will ban this shit as soon as they’re back in office. See what that does to the market cap.
But they won’t because they are fucking spineless and have no fight in them.
the Covfefe in Chief will never allow another Democratic presidency
You mean the billionaires who own Trump will never allow another Demicratic president nor Congressional majority. Rule of law and democracy, even the pale shadow of democracy we had, in the US is dead.
It’s only dead when we surrender or are killed. Quit whining and start organizing and training.
Never’s not a very long time for someone who’s 78 and in his condition.
When the value of your money is only measured by how much of a different currency you can exchange it for, and not it’s actual purchasing power (which is 0 for 99.9% of all cryptocurrencies) then it’s essentially fake money. Literally no different than the monopoly money Luigi was carrying around with him.
There’s nothing special here, just pretend you showed up with 100 signed photos of yourself and said you were selling half of them to the highest bidder and keeping the other half. Now your collection of autographed photos is ostensibly worth 50 times as much as you are selling them for.
Same thing here, only stupider.
Yes and no.
It’s a collection of numbers with properties related to how they’re found that make them difficult to counterfeit, and the way they’re recorded makes it difficult to steal. This, as well as a handful of other properties, give digital currencies behavior not entirely unlike the things that make cash useful.
Unlike money, it’s not backed by a government. This means that it’s much more volatile in terms of value. Say what you will about the state of the US, it’s unlikely that the dollar will significantly change value over the next year. It’s essentially guaranteed that the price of every cryptocurrency will be wildly different a year from today.
Put them together and you’ve got a wonderful vehicle for laundering money or bribery, which is what this all is.
The other key aspect of money that it’s missing is being generally useful outside of speculation. I can reliably use my dollars to pay for goods and services, and most significantly to pay taxes and satisfy debts in the eyes of the law. Cryptocurrency is inevitably either instantly converted to money once someone gets it, or it’s held onto under the assumption it’ll be worth more later.
Money has value because it gets you “stuff”. Cryptocurrency has value because it gets you money.
It’s fake money, but it’s a very complicated and realistic fake money.
People acting like cryptocurrency isn’t just a security backed by thin air really drives me up the wall.
Crypto is a mirage and when it crashes people will all be wondering, “damn how were we this naive.”. But humans are great at playing make believe so who knows. But acting like the USD and Bitcoin are the same is lunacy.
Like you said one is money, the other you hold onto and want to turn into money.
Cryptocurrency is inevitably either instantly converted to money once someone gets it, or it’s held onto under the assumption it’ll be worth more later.
Money has value because it gets you “stuff”. Cryptocurrency has value because it gets you money.
With one notable exception…when it is actually used as a medium of exchange, to buy drugs on the internet. (Which the vast majority of crypto is not used for, especially shitcoins like Trump’s scam.)
Yeah and you’re a fool if you use Bitcoin for that purpose
That would be what XMR is for
I truly have no idea what that means… Unrelated, but I recently got into a tragic boat accident.
Drugs and money laundering, and I am very sure the latter is going on with this, by design.
I don’t know if this one is more money laundering or bribery or both, but it’s clearly something in that ballpark, yeah.
Crypto can be used at regular merchants as well. It’s very handy for avoiding interchange fees, and annoying bank rules. For instance, my own bank will not allow me to make any purchases with a vendor outside of the US, even if I call them and try to pre-authorize it; their excuse is that there’s too much fraud. That means that if i want to buy, for instance, military surplus apparel and equipment from Czechia that I have to find a company that uses a US payment processor, or find someone that’s importing the surplus that I want, rather than going directly to the source. If I want a surplus Czech OM-90 gas mask, it’s about $400 new through a US distributor, and about $50 or less (…plus shipping) if I buy one directly from Czechia. Even allowing for the relatively small mining fees with crypto, and the costs of shipping, buying direct with crypto ends up being much cheaper than using a US distributor, or trying to find a bank that doesn’t either prevent foreign transactions or charge usurious fees for them.
It can be, but it’s not typical. I’ve actually used the barter system more often than I’ve even heard of people actually using crypto for routine business transactions. And I live in an area where barter is not a standard arrangement.
It’s not just the cost of the transaction, which can vary depending on demand (lack of predicability is another issue), it’s also how long the transactions can take. For any retail establishment, taking an hour to process a transaction is entirely unfit for purpose. A minute is too long.
In your use case, you’re using Bitcoin more like a payment processor than as a currency. Something like PayPal would work just as well if your bank played ball, and would work faster and have more predictable costs.
assuming you can find a merchant that takes it.
True enough.
It also in those cases feels more like a medium of exchange rather than a currency. I don’t know anyone who says the price is “x bitcoin”, rather they say its priced at “x dollars/euros/etc.” and so will be x bitcoin.
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This was a blatant way to allow people to donate to Trump while skirting existing campaign finance laws. Get his buddies to buy his meme coin for exorbitant prices, and now he gets to keep the money because he “sold” something and it’s not a bribe.
It’s like those terrible celebrity endorsed/named perfumes and other product.
Being sold like stocks
But with no physical product even a shitty one
I read your comment, thought it’s impossible that you’re right, and took a beat to verify. You’re entirely correct. Crypto truly is this stupid.
The same method is used to determine market cap of publically traded companies. Whatever the most recent trade price was * total number of shares = what the company is supposedly worth.
Non-rigged markets tend to also require a minimum trade volume, restrict insider trading, and keep a close watch to prevent pump-and-dump and similar scams.
Clean, open markets are regulated. That’s why the scammers to go the crypto markets: they’re opaque, rigged, and free of those inconvenient fraud-prevention rules
Great! Now we need to fix the tax code so you have to declare that as income, and it’s taxed progressively. That would pretty quickly put the kibosh on these scams.
Short term capital gains already are taxed as income. I doubt anyone is holding these rug pull coins for more than a year.
Memes are getting pretty gross.
Maybe we should slow down the meme magic train…
“Let me tell you, folks, this, what we’re seeing right now, it’s HUGE, okay? I mean, some people are saying—and I don’t know, but they’re saying—it could be the biggest rugpull in the history of rugpulls. Tremendous potential. Absolutely tremendous. Nobody’s ever seen a rugpull like this before, believe me.”
This is not a rugpull but a readjustment. The purpose of this coin and Melania’s coin is to get around laws preventing foreign sources from donating to or bribing Trump.
Well yes and no. It’s a way for foreign countries to launder their bribes. They “buy” the coins knowing he will get the money. The quasi-rug-pull part is him extracting the laundered money. Everyone, except his shit-head followers, understands this.
I suspect this coin might not be a complete rugpull though. I suspect the rugpull cones at the end if his term or when he dies whichever comes first.
Who cares? He’s gonna get away with all of it
Unless and until he is stopped. I wonder if anyone is trying to take down the exchange?
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Every crypto is intended as a rug pull
The first I heard of Trump’s memecoin was a headline declaring it was worth $25 Billion. I’m a pretty online person, so I tend to hear about these things pretty quickly. The article said it was worth $9 billion in 12 hours.
$9 billion is an unimaginable amount of money for any number of people to decide to “invest” in under 12 hours. The only way I can explain that happening is if many, very wealthy people, had been notified about the coin going up for sale ahead of time and wanted to curry favor with Trump.
What a fucking embarrassment this country is.
I’m not even sure which exchange(s) it is on? I wonder if it’s almost entirely about laundering money and almost none of the peasant redhats put money into it.
It’s entirely for foreign governments to bribe him and nothing else.
People have not actually put $9 bn into it. The value is crudely extrapolated from price and volume, but there’s nothing actually there.
I guess that makes sense. So if they only sell 1 coin out of 1 million and they sell it for $100 then they can walk around saying the lot of coins as a whole are worth $100 million? (obviously a simplified example)
This is a clear and obvious pump-and-dump. Anyone that falls for this deserves to be fleeced.
I mean its a premine
I agree they deserve to be fleeced. I just don’t think he deserves to get the money.
