'Open corruption' Trump eases rules on cryptocurrency trade while making billions for himself

The cryptocurrency multi-billionaire Justin Sun could barely contain his glee. Last month, he flaunted a £75,000 Donald Trump-branded watch he was awarded at a private dinner at Trump's Virginia golf club.

- Peter Stone

Sun had earned the recognition for buying £15m worth of the memecoin $Trump, ranking him first among 220 purchasers invited to the event on 22 May.

The much-hyped dinner and a White House tour for 25 leading memecoin buyers was devised to spur sales of $Trump and raked in about $148m (£110m) for the US president and his partners.

Memecoins are crypto tokens that are often based on online jokes and have no inherent value. They often prove risky investments as their prices can fluctuate wildly.

The $Trump memecoin was launched days before the president's inauguration, spurring a surge of buyers.

The 22 May dinner has sparked strong criticism from ethics watchdogs, former prosecutors and academics. "Self-enrichment is exactly what the founders feared most in a leader - that's why they put two separate prohibitions on self-benefit into the constitution," said Paul Rosenzweig, a former federal prosecutor. "Trump profiting from his presidential memecoin is a textbook example of what the framers wanted to avoid."

Academics, too, offer a harsh analysis of Trump's crypto dealings. Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University who co-authored the book How Democracies Die, said: "I have never seen such open corruption in any modern government anywhere."

Such qualms don't seem to have fazed Trump or Sun, who has also invested £56m in World Liberty Financial (WLF), a crypto enterprise that Trump and his two elder sons launched last autumn.

The fortunes of crypto tycoons have improved markedly since Trump took office and loosened regulations on the industry. Three Sun crypto companies that faced civil fraud charges in 2023 had their cases paused in February by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which cited the public interest.