philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Official Trump Coin: How Did We Get Here?

In a move that perfectly encapsulates the peculiarities of our times, Donald Trump launched a meme coin on January 17th, 2025, just a few days before his presidential inauguration. Within less than 24 hours it has reached a staggering market capitalization of $4.8 billion and a fully diluted valuation of $24.3 billion. "Trump Coin" has taken the cryptocurrency world by storm, potentially positioning itself to challenge Dogecoin's supremacy in the meme coin ecosystem.

... What's different this time isn't the strategy, but the medium – and ironically, the regulatory environment that made it possible. ...

The strict interpretation of securities laws that follows from Gensler’s school of thought, while intended to protect investors, may have inadvertently pushed cryptocurrency innovation toward meme coins rather than utility tokens. ...

This dynamic has created what might be called "the regulatory safe harbor of absurdity" – the more explicitly a token positions itself as a meme with no serious utility, the safer it becomes from securities regulation. This perverse incentive structure has contributed to the proliferation of meme coins, which now represent a significant portion of the cryptocurrency market cap. ...

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/01/18/official-trump-coin-how-did-we-get-here/