Trump’s Hawk Tuah-like meme coin moment isn’t a betrayal—it’s keeping a promise

At some point between his November election win and Monday’s inauguration, Donald Trump appears to have drawn inspiration from an unlikely source: “Hawk Tuah Girl” Haliey Welch.

Following in the footsteps of the Talk Tuah podcaster—who launched an overinflated “meme coin” last December that promptly lost 99% of its value—Trump kicked off inauguration weekend last Friday by launching a meme coin of his own: $TRUMP. Although it has so far maintained more of its peak value than $HAWK and other predecessors did during their brief market cycles, $TRUMP has proven similarly volatile.

Unlike the others, it also opens up an ethical can of worms about whether a world leader with decision-making power over the crypto market should own a tradable asset within that market.

Trump’s move has been met with a deluge of skepticism and outrage, with perhaps a bit more of it than usual coming from the MAGA side. One reaction nobody can reasonably claim, however, is surprise. Trump’s meme coin is not only in keeping with how he campaigned last year, but how he has long conducted himself as a politician and businessman.

It was only in 2021 that Trump said bitcoin seemed like a scam, but he apparently had a change of heart closer to the election. He made hundreds of thousands in 2022 from selling NFTs, which similarly rely on blockchain technology, and his financial disclosure form for last year’s election revealed somewhere between $1 million and $5 million invested in a “virtual Ethereum key.” The real turn in his relationship with cryptocurrency came last May, though, when his campaign announced it would accept donations in crypto as part of a broader effort to assemble a “crypto army” leading up to election day. (“It’s time for the crypto army to send a message to Washington,” Tyler Winklevoss later wrote on X in his endorsement of Trump.)

Perhaps the same advisors who steered Trump toward podcasts instead of traditional media as a venue for campaign interviews suggested he would find friendly ground in the crypto space if he pledged support for its growth. Maybe he arrived at that conclusion on his own. Either way, he cemented his status as The Crypto Candidate last July by giving a keynote speech at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville—the industry’s largest gathering. By that point, he’d already collected $4 million in bitcoin donations for his campaign.

During a nearly 50-minute speech at the conference, Trump pledged to create a “strategic national Bitcoin stockpile,” and make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.” He also took pains to contrast his crypto support with the Biden administration’s heavy regulation of the industry, promising to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler. (Following the November election, Gensler announced he would be stepping down from the role.)

Now, after successfully courting the crypto community throughout the election, Trump appears to be reaping the benefits.

He announced the Trump coin online last Friday during the Crypto Ball in Washington, D.C., hosted by Trump’s newly appointed crypto czar, the billionaire and podcaster David Sacks. “My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE!” the president wrote on X. “It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW. Go to http://gettrumpmemes.com — Have Fun!” The fun began at the low, low price of nearly $6.50 and rose to a high of $74.59 on Sunday. A day later, its value had plummeted to around $40, where it remains at the time of this writing. The coin’s market cap, according to CoinMarketCap, is currently $8.6 billion.

Trump wasn’t the only member of the first family to launch a meme coin over the weekend, though. First Lady Melania Trump announced hers on Sunday, and its trajectory has been similarly volatile. (The pastor who delivered the benediction after Trump’s swearing-in ceremony on Monday has also reportedly launched a meme coin, though it hasn’t exactly reached the same heights.)

On brand as always

Lest anyone suggest the meme coin was a last-second effort to capitalize on his electoral victory as a private citizen before taking office, Trump has continued to promote it as recently as his second night back in the White House.

Based on the value Trump’s coin accrued, some supporters must have been excited about it–beyond the opportunity for speculative investment. Others on the right have voiced concerns. Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who endorsed Trump, posed the following question on X: “What’s the difference between the Hawk Tuah coin and the Trump coin besides nothing?” Meanwhile, Michael A. Gayed, a market analyst with a popular Substack, wrote on X that the meme coin “made me lose a lot of respect for our coming president.” And in an interview with The Atlantic, prominent crypto investor Nic Carter complained that Trump’s meme coin “exposed the worst parts of the crypto industry to the public eye in a way that really didn’t need to happen, right when we were on the cusp of legitimacy.”

While their grievances are merited, Trump’s supporters in this space would be naïve to expect Trump would advocate for only the most above-board aspects of crypto, whatever those may be. It would also be ahistorical to expect he’d restrict that support to mere advocacy.

Trump is notorious for leveraging his brand to enrich himself in ways that could charitably be called questionable, from both a moral and legal standpoint. Immediately after winning the presidency in 2016, he paid $25 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging deceptive practices within his Trump University. Earlier, during his run on The Apprentice, he made millions endorsing multi-level marketing outfit ACN, and featuring it on the show. (A show, it should be noted, about making savvy business moves.) Trump and his children would later be sued for fraud over their involvement. Though the ACN fraud case was dismissed just last year, a judge threw it out on jurisdictional grounds, rather than the substance of the allegations. Trump’s interest in MLMs didn’t end with ACN, either; he also lent his name to one called Ideal Health in the aughts, turning it into The Trump Network.

During his first term, in 2019, a New York judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million in damages for funneling millions raised from charitable donations into his 2016 presidential campaign. Because Trump had demonstrably “abuse[d] charities for personal gain,” New York Attorney General Letitia James ordered The Trump Foundation to cease operations. Years later, while running for office again, Trump used campaign donations to cover his vast legal expenses.

What reason would anyone have to expect Trump to usher in a new era of deregulated freedom for crypto, and not explore it himself?

To answer Portnoy’s earlier question, one difference between the Hawk Tuah coin and Trump’s is that Haliey Welch built her brand from spark-plug folksiness and relatability, which may be why some fans felt betrayed that she would lend her celebrity to a scammy-sounding tech play.

Trump, however, has spent much of his career exploiting loopholes to amass wealth and power, and boasting about it. A scammy-sounding tech play isn’t betraying his brand—it is his brand.

The other difference between the two is that Welch is currently in hot water with the SEC over her meme coin, while Trump gets to decide who runs the SEC.