Friday night Ogle’s head pounded, so much so that he swore off working for the rest of the night. Then, a friend messaged him that President Donald Trump just launched a cryptocurrency. He decided to invest big in the coin and, ignoring his headache, stayed up until the early hours of the morning watching the coin surge.
“I put probably 50% of my entire portfolio worth of cash into it,” said Ogle, a crypto security expert who uses an alias but refuses to give his name for saftey reasons. “By the next day, I made more money than I’ve ever made in my life in one day.”
Like many other people, Ogle was drawn to Trump’s latest business venture, the crypto meme coin $TRUMP. He launched it three days before taking the highest office in the land.
“My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE. It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” Trump wrote on Truth Social a few hours after releasing the cryptocurrency.
The meme coin’s market capitalization rose to over $14 billion by Sunday as many Americans rushed to buy it as an investment opportunity or to show support for the incoming president. However, the coin became the center of a national debate over the ethics of Trump launching a coin right before he took office.
The coin’s price started at less than $10 and quickly surged above $70 early Sunday morning. The price held relatively steady from Tuesday to Thursday, moving up and down in the $35-45 range. As of Thursday morning, the coin was valued at approximately $38 and has a market capitalization of $7.68 billion.
This was not Trump’s first time actively participating in the crypto universe. Trump and his family members, including his youngest son Barron, backed World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance project. A presale for the token launched on Oct. 15, 2024, and investors cannot trade it yet.
Ogle also acted as an adviser for World Liberty Financial and he noted the token had not gotten much traction until $TRUMP skyrocketed last week.
Ogle said that he decided to invest in $TRUMP, not as a mode of political support but as an investment opportunity.
“I couldn’t care less about the political statement. I’m certainly not supporting Trump via purchasing a meme coin,” he said
He said that among the crypto community, there were initially concerns that Trump’s new token would be a cash grab scheme; however, worries subsided after Trump kept several promises he made to crypto fanatics, including pardoning Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht had been serving a life sentence for crimes including distributing narcotics. Ulbricht’s website accepted bitcoin to pay for drugs.
The release of the coin less than 72 hours before Trump’s inauguration sparked criticism about the political ethics of the business.
Aaron Scherb, senior director for legislative affairs at Common Cause, a group whose mission is “holding public officials accountable,” expressed concern over the lack of uniform regulation around the cryptocurrency industry and said the Trump coin was no exception.
“The cryptocurrency industry, in general, has been a wild west with next to no accountability and an anything-goes approach,” Scherb said.
He noted that even if there was nothing outright illegal about Trump’s coin, it certainly “looks and smells bad” and seemed like an attempt to line his own pockets.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said the Trump coin was released as a novelty, not as a tool for investment.
“It was, as I understand, released for its entertainment value. … To the extent that that was made clear to people who would purchase it, I’m OK with it. If it had been released as an investment vehicle, I might feel differently,” Lummis said.
Lummis had been a vocal advocate for the growth of cryptocurrency in the U.S. This Tuesday, she met with Eric Trump to discuss the Federal government building a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
When asked about whether she would support a crypto reserve for another type of coin, including $TRUMP, Lummis affirmed it should only be Bitcoin.
“Bitcoin is unlike any other digital asset. It doesn’t have a founders group, and it’s scarce, and always will be. So I think we should limit it to Bitcoin,” she said.
