In This Article:
Listen and subscribe to Opening Bid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
New meme coins from President Trump and first lady Melania Trump could leave retail investors in a bad place.
"It's a gambling token. It's a meme coin," Anthony Scaramucci told Yahoo Finance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Our society is always going to have gambling. Our society is always going to have smoking and alcohol. But he's the leader of our country, and he does represent something to the rest of these countries, at least the institution of the presidency once did. So I don't like it."
The Skybridge Capital founder said retail investors could be left "holding the bag" on both coins amid volatile swings in value.
Trump surprised the crypto community this past Friday by announcing the debut of Trump coin. Officially called Trump (TRUMP-OFFICIAL-USD), the slogan for the coin is "Join the Trump Community. This is History in the Making!"
The crypto venture was put together by CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump organization. CIC Digital and its affiliates own 80% of the supply of the Trump coin. New tokens will be released gradually over the next three years. The affiliates will be paid trading revenue as the tokens are sold.
On the eve of Trump's inauguration, Melania's coin (MELANIA-USD) debuted.
In other words, the Trump family stands to profit from the presidency.
Trump coin quickly rose to a market cap of $73 billion in about 48 hours, surpassing DOGE as the largest meme coin. The market cap of the crypto has since dropped to $7.3 billion from its launch, according to CoinMarketCap. Melania coin is trading at a market cap of $732 million.
"In our view, the launch of a meme coin by the biggest political figure in the world is a massive paradigm shift in the way U.S. and rest of the world would approach crypto. It signifies a new regulatory era, where governments see crypto as a technology to reach out to the masses directly," Bernstein digital assets analyst Gautam Chhugani wrote.
"We have seen this in U.S, Argentina and even in Canada, where the right wing political side has leaned in favor of Bitcoin/crypto."
Scaramucci had a brief tenure as the White House communications director during Trump's first term. But the hedge fund founder has since settled back in at Skybridge and became a fierce critic of Trump and his inner circle.
He has also positioned Skybridge to cash in on the soaring popularity of crypto.
