Senate Democrat Hammers Trump’s Meme Coin ‘Grift’: Like ‘Posting His Venmo’ for Foreign Governments

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) hammered President Donald Trump for hawking his meme coin, calling the cryptocurrency and undisclosed financial transactions behind it potentially “the most fundamental corruption in the history of the presidency.”

“So Trump has done a lot of shady, self-interested shit since taking office. But I want to talk to you about the worst of the corruption, the Trump coin. This is a pure grift,” began Murphy, who has significantly increased his online presence in recent months to try and combat the Trump administration.

“Okay, so Trump coin, it’s a meme coin. So it’s got no independent value. Its price is just a function of demand. So if a lot of people want it because they like Donald Trump, then its price goes up. If nobody wants it, then its price plummets. So Trump launches this coin right before the inauguration. Why?” Murphy continued, explaining the logistics behind the coin.

He added:

Because he wants to make sure that his MAGA supporters, who are like, wild with enthusiasm about the inauguration, would buy up a ton of the coin at the outset. It worked. Prices jumped from $0.18 to $75 apiece, and Trump’s net worth? On paper, it swelled to the $55, 56 billion. And when it fell back down, the price of the coin fell back down to $17.

A ton of his supporters who bought it at the top lost actual real money. Okay, but the crash, it doesn’t matter to Trump because Trump gets a transaction fee. He’s made $100 million, probably a lot more just in trading fees. Well, many of his supporters have lost thousands of dollars.

Okay, but that’s not the worst. Trump holds back 80% of the total coin. And what he’s going to do is release more when prices get high again. Because in addition to the transaction fees, he gets paid on that initial release of the coin.

So how does the price get high again? Well, demand goes up. And who is in the best position to buy a ton of coin to drive up the price? Foreign governments and billionaire CEOs who have business interests before the Trump administration. Now you might say that’s illegal, but it’s not. Nothing prevents, like, a Russian oligarch from buying a ton of Trump coin in order to put money directly into Trump’s pocket.

And even worse, we will never know if the buyer is a Russian oligarch, or a Saudi prince or an oil company CEO, because it’s all secret. In the first minute of trading, one buyer purchased around 6 million trump coins, sending the price through the roof. One buyer was able to send the price through the roof before that buyer sold the entire supply for a two-day profit of more than $100 million.

Reporting suggests that in this case, the buyer was probably actually coming out of wait for it. China.

When Trump cashes out, he’s not doing it through a mainstream exchange. He’s doing it through unregulated Chinese exchanges. Why? Because he’s hiding something. Either the source of the money or the people connected to him that are getting the payments, because on a mainstream exchange, you might have a modicum of background checks done on the cash outs, but Chinese exchanges are totally dark.

So while the Trump coin may seem like some silly, hard to understand online fad. It could end up being the most fundamental corruption in the history of the presidency. It’s as if Trump is posting his Venmo or his Cash App handle, and inviting corporations and foreign governments to just send him cash in secret.

Watch the full clip above.