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 might have hoped to reach.

Launched on January 17th, the TRUMP coin saw a dramatic rise in price, rising 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, hit the market. Unlike its predecessor, MELANIA has struggled starting around $7 and plummeting below $4 after a brief peak of $14.

While both tokens’ volatile trajectories seem to have made 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 US 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, expressed his concerns on X (formerly Twitter): “The most dangerous aspect of the Trump coin for the nation is what follows. Now anyone globally can effectively deposit money on The US President’s bank account in just a few clicks. Any service – be it geopolitical, corporate or personal – is now openly for sale.”

The decision to launch a memecoin has also sparked wider criticism within the crypto industry. While memecoins have become a prominent use-case for blockchain technology, many developers argue that they reinforce a get-rich-quick perception that undermines the sector’s credibility.

Gabor Gurbacs, founder of digital asset firm Pointsville, wrote on X: “Trump needs to fire 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 completely absurd that he would do this,” he shared. Politico. “They are touching 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 company that launched the coin. Such concentration is a hallmark of potential “pump-and-dump” schemes, where insiders inflate a token’s value before selling their holdings, leaving other investors with losses.

There is 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. In addition, the insider-held tokens align with previous distributions of Trump’s NFT trading cards, which were also managed by CNC Digital, meaning the tokens can be reserved for the president’s NFT holders.

However, the same transparency does not apply to MELANIA. About 89% of MELANIA tokens are controlled by insiders, according to Bubblemaps. 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 by President Trump saying, ‘I support crypto,'” Vaiman said. “Melania launching her tokens feels like they just want to make as much money as they can from this and then forget about it. It gives this a different flavor.”

This is not the first time that the crypto community has questioned Trump’s entry into the industry. In August, Trump and his sons launched World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a platform that promised to develop a loan product. The project faced 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 the pre-sale proceeds directly to a Trump controlled company.

The potential for conflict of interest 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 accused of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission — a department now under the control of Trump’s White House.