Trump Product Websites Begin Taking Presidential Meme Coin as Payment

Websites selling products with President Donald Trump’s brand are now accepting the $TRUMP meme coin as payment.

Trump-branded watches, sneakers and fragrances take payment via the meme coin to attract the president’s supporters, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (Jan. 28). The meme coin was released Jan. 17, and although its value has since shrunk, it still had a market cap of $5.4 billion as of Tuesday.

The launch of the meme coin drew criticism from within the cryptocurrency industry, with detractors saying Trump was undermining the legitimacy of the role of crypto in traditional finance.

“Now, on the cusp of getting some liberalization of crypto regulations in this country, the main thing people are thinking about crypto is, “Oh, it’s just a casino for these meme coins,’” said Nic Carter , a Trump supporter and partner at crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures , The Associated Press reported Jan. 21. “It does the opposite of validating us, it makes it look completely unserious.”

Efforts to get people to pay with the Trump token are part of an ongoing attempt to encourage crypto users to see the digital coins as an online payment tool, the Bloomberg report said. While some have used dollar-pegged stablecoins for transactions, cryptocurrencies that have a fluctuating value, such as $TRUMP, have yet to catch on as a method of payment.

The Trump meme coin has the potential to add billions of dollars to the president’s fortune while setting up a conflict of interest as the White House takes a more pro-crypto approach to digital asset regulation.

Nearly half of all corporate donations during the 2024 election cycle came from crypto companies, and 250 “pro crypto” members of Congress and 16 “pro crypto” senators were elected last year.

“Now that Trump is sitting in the White House, the sector is increasingly keen to discover what exactly the return on its investment might be,” PYMNTS wrote this week. “As a candidate, Trump made numerous sweeping promises and appeals to the crypto industry. As a president, he has yet to mention bitcoin in an official capacity.”

Still, Trump issued an executive order Jan. 23 calling for a comprehensive draft of federal crypto regulations . The same order set up a working group to explore a national digital asset stockpile and banned central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).