Warren, Blumenthal ask SEC to investigate Trump meme coin
· UPIAug. 4 (UPI) -- Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday called on Wall Street's top cop to investigate whether President Donald Trump's meme coin is a scam.
The president launched his $TRUMP coin days before his second inauguration in 2025, and made a total of $636 million when it peaked at $9 billion.
But the coin has since lost 97% of its value, down to $364 million as of Tuesday -- a total loss of $3.8 billion for nearly a million ordinary investors, The New York Times reported.
Warren, D-Mass., and Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the venture.
"While all cryptocurrency trading involves risk, such a stark asymmetry raises questions about how the president made his cryptocurrency fortune, including through potentially fraudulent enrichment schemes with implications for market integrity and stability -- not to mention the financial well-being of nearly a million American investors," the senators wrote in a letter to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins.
"Your agency is responsible for promoting integrity, stability, and fairness in our financial markets, and must investigate this matter further to ensure investors and our markets are adequately protected -- no matter who, or how powerful, the individuals involved are," the letter continued.
The senators said they were concerned Trump's meme coin was a "rug pull," a scheme in which organizers raise funds from overhyped cryptocurrency only to disappear with the funds once it crashes.
Trump earned profits whether the coin went up or down as he collected fees from trades, The Times reported.
"Reports indicate that other traders were able to pounce early and profit from the initial hype as ordinary investors were still reacting to the news of its release," the senators wrote. "This early trading, which some observers have speculated could have been based on inside information, proved to be extremely lucrative."
Trump last month defended his earnings, telling CNBC there was "nothing illegal" or "wrong" with his ventures in crypto.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, "Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged -- or will ever engage -- in conflicts of interest."
"President Trump proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world through executive actions," Kelly added in a statement to TIME.
"All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people -- and any so-called 'reporters' pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade."
This week in Washington
President Donald Trump announces a program to allow veterans to expedite a career in commercial trucking on Thursday. Known as the Freedom Haulers program, the initiative would allow any veterans who drove heavy equipment to be automatically eligible for a commercial trucking license. Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/UPI | License Photo