Trump Got So Greedy He Might Botch Crypto’s Plan in Congress #CriptoNews

Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Since Donald Trump launched his meme coin on his inauguration weekend, Democrats haven’t made too much noise about the president’s efforts to make money in crypto, despite the obvious potential for corruption. Though some spoke out about his crypto projects making the family bags of easy money, there were still several important Democrats like Senators Mark Warner, Andy Kim, and Ruben Gallego (a huge recipient of industry donations) considering Republican legislation that would boost the industry and protect the Trumps’ crypto assets.

But over the past few weeks, the Trump family’s habit of sucking real money out of their cryptocurrencies may have finally gone too far. Last Thursday, Eric Trump was in Dubai when he announced that an Emirati state-owned investment firm would invest $2 billion in the crypto exchange Binance via Trump’s latest token, a stablecoin called USD1. (A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency tied to a reserve currency like the dollar; they are pivotal to making deals with traditional financial interests that fear the volatility inherent to cryptoworld.) With this investment, the Emiratis helped provide legitimacy for the president’s untested venture while giving his company millions in fees. It also forges a direct connection between one of his companies and Binance, an exchange that settled charges of violating sanctions and anti-money-laundering laws not long ago.

Now, a bill that the crypto industry has lobbied for quite heavily
— one that just so happens to protect the president’s crypto interests — could be in jeopardy. Two days after the Binance deal was announced, four Democratic senators withdrew their support of the Genius bill, which regulates stablecoins like Trump’s USD1. Their statement, which included Gallego, Warner, and Kim, expressed concerns about “stronger provisions”
regarding money laundering, foreign issuers, and national security — all issues at hand in the deal Eric inked in Dubai.

The workweek brought further problems for the Genius bill, with Democrats like Elizabeth Warren advising her colleagues to vote against the stablecoin bill. “Democrats who both support and oppose the Genius Act agree that greenlighting Donald Trump’s corrupt stablecoin deals is wrong,” Warren said in a statement on Monday. “We need to make sure we fix this in the bill, or else the Genius Act will simply facilitate Trump’s crypto corruption.” Democrats walked out of a House Financial Services meeting the same day to protest Trump’s many conflicts of interest in crypto. Axios reports that Democrats will present a bill this week called the End Crypto Corruption Act to block the president, vice-president, and members of Congress from issuing coins they can make money off.

That bill will include meme coins, like the $TRUMP asset launched the Friday before he became president, which has brought in millions more in fees. The coin, which maintains a $2 billion market cap despite losing the vast majority of its value since January, brought renewed scrutiny late last month when Trump announced a contest for top $TRUMP holders — the top 220 owners of the coin would have dinner with him. The announcement gave the coin a boost largely with foreign investors who sought a few moments with the president in exchange for a few million dollars.

“I want crypto,” Trump said on Meet the Press this week. “I think crypto’s important because if we don’t do it, China’s going to.” But if he keeps doing it this way, he could jeopardize the industry-friendly legislation the crypto industry gave him millions to help enact.