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On Sept. 9, 2024, the F.B.I.’s Criminal Investigative Division reported that “as the use of cryptocurrency in the global financial system continues to grow, so too does its use by criminal actors.” The exploitation of cryptocurrency, according to the F.B.I., “was most pervasive in investment scams, where losses accounted for almost 71 percent of all losses related to cryptocurrency.”
Seven days later, Donald Trump declared on X: “Crypto is one of those things we have to do. Whether we like it or not, I have to do it.” In the same tweet, posted a month and a half before the election, Trump promoted his new venture World Liberty Financial Inc.
Back in the White House, Trump has discovered that what he criticized as “not money” six years ago could now serve as an ideal way to profit from his presidency. Estimates of the value of Trump’s crypto assets vary widely, from $2.9 billion by Fortune to $6.2 billion by Forbes, although Forbes acknowledged the figure is “a dubious estimate given it’s based on supply not yet on the market.” And as Trump said, it’s not, strictly speaking, money.
Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell and the author of “The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance,” who has written extensively about digital currencies, contended in an email that:
It is quite remarkable for any government official, let alone the leader of the free world, to create and promote a vehicle for rampant speculation and to directly profit from it. Trump seems to show scarce restraint in his willingness to use the levers of power to enrich his family and close associates with little accountability or transparency.
Trump’s launch of two “meme coins,” $Trump and $Melania, Prasad continued, “take conflicts of interest to an altogether new level, especially given Trump’s official position and his control of the entire financial regulatory apparatus.”
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