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TRUMP Coin’s Biggest Critics Are Crypto Industry Insiders

Among the most vocal critics of TRUMP, the controversial and wildly popular memecoin launched by Donald Trump on the eve of his 2025 inauguration, are the very crypto enthusiasts he may have hoped to court.
The TRUMP coin, launched on Jan. 17, saw a dramatic price surge, climbing from $7 to an all-time high of $75 within 24 hours before settling at $38. Two days after TRUMP’s debut, MELANIA, a coin endorsed by First Lady Melania Trump, entered the market. Unlike its predecessor, MELANIA has struggled, starting around $7 and plummeting below $4 after a briefly peaking at $14.
While both tokens’ volatile trajectories appear to have minted some overnight millionaires, they have also drawn sharp criticism from industry insiders.
The potential for conflicts of interest has been a focal point of the backlash, with critics — including members of the U.S. congress — raising concerns that the token could enable individuals to curry favor with the president.
Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House communications director turned crypto advocate, voiced his apprehensions on X (formerly Twitter): “The most perilous aspect of Trump coin for the nation is what follows. Now, anyone globally can effectively deposit money into the bank account of the President of the United States with just a few clicks. Every favor—be it geopolitical, corporate, or personal—is now openly for sale.”
The decision to launch a memecoin has also sparked broader criticism within the crypto industry. While memecoins have become a prominent use-case for blockchain technology, many developers argue they reinforce a get-rich-quick perception that undermines the sector’s credibility.
Gabor Gurbacs, founder of digital asset firm Pointsville, posted on X: “Trump needs to dismiss his crypto advisors, from top to bottom.”
Nic Carter, a general partner at a crypto investment firm and a vocal Trump supporter, was similarly scathing: “It’s absolutely preposterous that he would do this,» he told Politico. “They’re plumbing new depths of idiocy with the memecoin launch.”
Specific concerns have been raised about the coin’s distribution. 80% of TRUMP tokens are concentrated in a small number of blockchain addresses controlled by CNC Digital, the firm that launched the coin. Such concentration is a hallmark of potential «pump-and-dump» schemes, where insiders inflate a token’s value before selling off their holdings, leaving other investors with losses.
There’s no evidence that Trump’s team plans to «dump» its tokens. Nicolas Vaiman, CEO of blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps, noted to CoinDesk that the distribution of TRUMP tokens at least matched what was outlined on its official website. Additionally, the insider-held tokens align with prior distributions of Trump’s NFT trading cards, which were also managed by CNC Digital, meaning the tokens may be reserved for the president’s NFT holders.
The same transparency does not apply to MELANIA, however. About 89% of MELANIA tokens are controlled by insiders, according to Bubblemaps. The on-chain supply does not match an official distribution breakdown on the token’s website, which earmarked 35% of tokens for «public distribution» and «community.»
Vaiman said the First Lady’s memecoin has cast a shadow over the original TRUMP coin: “TRUMP could have been a statement from President Trump saying, ‘I endorse crypto,’” Vaiman said. “Melania launching her tokens feels like they just want to make as much money as they can on this, and then forget about it. It gives this a different flavor.”
This is not the first time the crypto community has questioned Trump’s forays into the industry. In August, Trump and his sons launched World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a platform that promised to develop a lending product. The project drew backlash for pre-selling tokens before delivering any tangible value, and critics were quick to point out the involvement of a former dating coach and memecoin promoter on the WLFI team, as well as the allocation of a percentage of presale proceeds directly to a Trump-controlled company.
The conflict-of-interest potential was also immediately apparent. Tron blockchain-founder Justin Sun recently became WLFI’s largest investor, making a $30 million purchase of the project’s tokens. In an X post on Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr. announced that World Liberty Financial would acquire some of Tron’s TRX tokens for its treasury.
A Hong Kong-based crypto billionaire, Sun was previously charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission — a department now under the control of Trump’s White House.
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CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: SUI and POL Rise 7.5%, Leading Index Higher

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2556.62, up 2.1% (+52.39) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.
Fifteen of 20 assets are trading higher.
Leaders: SUI (+7.5%) and POL (+7.5%).
Laggards: FIL (-4.5%) and XLM (-1.6%).
The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.
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DAO Infrastructure Provider Tally Raises $8M to Scale On-Chain Governance

Tally, a leader in on-chain governance tooling, has secured $8 million in Series A funding aimed at scaling its governance technology to more crypto-native decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Tally is best known for the Tally Protocol, which powers infrastructure to help leading protocols conduct effective on-chain governance of their DAOs, including Arbitrum, Uniswap DAO, ZKsync, Wormhole, Eigenlayer, Obol and Hyperlane.
«We’ve built this complete stack of software for operating these on-chain organizations,» Dennison Bertram, CEO and co-founder of Tally Protocol, said in an interview with CoinDesk. «We can take you from your idea to launching your token, to distributing your membership or ownership, all the way to the value accrual for your protocol.»
The platform began as a DAO governance tool and has evolved into the most widely adopted software stack for on-chain organizations across the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, it said in a release.
«On-chain governance and capital formation could, in theory, dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of forming and operating organizations by moving these processes entirely into software rather than traditional jurisdictions guided by platforms like Tally,» Bertram said.
One day, on-chain organizations might be seen as a way to compete with nation states, he argued, referencing the costly and lawyer-intensive process of registering foundations and other legal entities typically used for crypto.
«Whoever embraces crypto really fully might actually be embracing fully the future,» he said.
Fixing vote turnout for better governance
One issue that Tally aims to tackle with funding from the Series A is low voter participation and apathy in DAO governance, which has led to sometimes controversial outcomes.
Last year, for example, a group of CompoundDAO token holders, called Golden Boys, successfully passed a controversial proposal to create a yield-bearing product called goldCOMP.
Despite initially gaining traction, the proposal faced significant controversy due to perceived irregularities, low voter turnout and a lack of widespread community engagement.
Ultimately, the Golden Boys agreed to cancel goldCOMP, which highlighted the broader issue of governance apathy within DAOs rather than any technical exploit or malicious intent.
«Many of the people that you should expect to vote ‘no’ on something like this didn’t show up,» Bertram said in an earlier interview. «What it shows is that the democratic process of governing a DAO is imperfect and needs improvement.»
To address this, Tally has developed staking mechanisms designed to reward active governance participants economically. Users can stake their governance tokens to receive Tally Liquid Staked Tokens (tLSTs), earning passive, auto-compounding yields while retaining voting rights within DAOs.
“This fundraise is really about leaning into the original vision,” Bertram said. “Now that we’ve proven that this works, that you can have these large organizations, it’s time to really scale it up.”
Institutions are getting involved in DAOs
Bertram also emphasized that recent regulatory clarity and shifts in attitude toward crypto governance in the U.S. have opened the door for increased institutional participation in DAOs.
“With this clarity, we’re going to get a lot more participation, not necessarily from average Joe token holders, but actually from large organizations that depend on the infrastructure they’re building on,” he said. “These organizations are going to need and want the ability to actually govern the infrastructure that they operate on.”
Ultimately, Bertram sees Tally’s role as pivotal in advancing decentralized governance and unlocking greater economic value for token holders by directly rewarding active, informed participants.
«Given the new acceptance of crypto as a key driver of future value in America, it’s time to scale it beyond crypto and make it a core primitive for creating new organizations,” he said.
The round was led by Appworks and Blockchain Capital with participation from BitGo amongst others.
Tally previously raised $7.5 million in 2021 across two funding rounds.
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Dutch Bank ING Said to Be Working on a New Stablecoin With Other TradFi and Crypto Firms

Dutch bank ING is working on a stablecoin, looking to take advantage of Europe’s new cryptocurrency regulations that came into force last year, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.
ING’s stablecoin project could take the form of a consortium effort involving other banks and crypto service providers, both people said.
“ING is working on a stablecoin project with a few other banks. It’s moving slow as multiple banks need board approval to set up a joint entity,” one of the sources said.
ING declined to comment.
Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets regime [MiCA] requires stablecoin issuers across EU member countries to hold an authorization license, while promoting the potential of euro-denominated stablecoins (the vast majority of the stablecoins in circulation are pegged to the U.S. dollar).
MiCA’s stablecoin rules, which also require issuers to maintain significant reserves in banks based in Europe, have strengthened compliant offerings like Circle’s euro stablecoin EURC over its main rival Tether, according to a note early this year from JPMorgan.
Banks like ING entering the European stablecoin space means French lender Société Générale, the first big bank to offer a stablecoin through its SG Forge innovation division, will soon have some competition.
Read more: Stablecoin Market Could Grow to $2T by End-2028: Standard Chartered
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