Author: Babywhale, Techub News
How long does it take to reach a market capitalization of $80 billion? The incoming US President Trump has provided the answer: 31 hours. Of course, while calculating market capitalization based on token prices may not be a method recognized by everyone, it is undeniable that Trump's team has created a record in the Web3 field that may be unmatched before and after. But this record may not have any benefits other than proving Trump's businessman nature of not getting up early without profit.
The story of these three days is believed to be well known to everyone. Trump posted a tweet on X about issuing the "Official Trump Meme", and it began to rise amid doubts that "X may have been hacked". But as the tweet was not deleted for a long time, and Eric Trump, the son of Trump, confirmed it, the market finally determined that the Meme token called TRUMP was indeed issued by the Trump family.
The subsequent plot development may have overturned the expectations of everyone, both inside and outside the Web3 industry. With a total of 1 billion tokens and only 20% released, the TRUMP price began to soar. According to GMGN data, the token price rose from the initial $0.18 on Saturday 10:00 to around $80 at around 17:00 yesterday, completing an impossible task over the weekend.
"Presidential Minting" Causes Controversy
The birth of TRMUP has allowed many investors to profit handsomely over the weekend, and major exchanges including Binance have also listed TRUMP's spot trading last night, which may be one of the important driving forces behind its price reaching at least a temporary high point.
From the perspective of making money, the US President issuing a Meme is undoubtedly a recognition and support for Meme itself and Web3, and it has also rewarded the chain-based Meme players who have been glued to their computers every day. In fact, the issuance of TRUMP was obviously preceded by a lot of preparatory work, with projects or work such as Meteora and Moonshot providing more or less assistance. Moonshot also stated that it had gained 400,000 new users in two days, and its App had once topped the Apple Store.
But from another perspective, the onlookers inside and outside the industry have mostly given negative reviews:
An article in Bitcoin Magazine made a very direct criticism, stating that "this is nothing more than a self-serving pump-and-dump scam, an unethical act, and the investors (or rather 'fans') who participate in it are extremely foolish." The author stated that he believes Trump will not allow Bit to compete with the US dollar, which is precisely the original meaning of Bit's existence, and hinted that if Trump truly supports Web3, he should not focus on treating Web3 as a "casino".
The founder of SkyBridge believes that Trump's behavior is not beneficial to the industry and supports calling it "corrupt behavior".
Even a doctor with 1.5 million followers on Youtube has come out to say: "The corruption of another president does not mean you can do the same thing".
Technology Should Be Free, But Not Disorderly
Musk once joked in a program that the animal protection association had approached him, asking SpaceX to assess the impact of rocket debris on whales, sharks and other creatures that might fall into the sea. They even specifically caught a seal and put headphones on it to let it hear the noise they thought the rocket launch would make, to prove that there was no actual impact.
Silicon Valley tech giants have long been critical of over-regulation, which may also be the main reason Musk decided to set up the government efficiency department "D.O.G.E".
The tech giants in the US have always advocated for relaxing regulations on technology to improve innovation capabilities, which is understandable, but weak regulation does not mean no rules, otherwise "freedom" will become "disorder".
In the author's understanding of the current large number of Altcoins that have not taken off, an important point is that the US regulatory authorities have never clearly defined what the tokens issued by these projects are. If they are a kind of security in some sense, such as representing the equity of the project, then what is the equity of the operating company of the project? If there is no way to define the actual meaning of these tokens, it will be difficult for large funds to be truly willing to invest based on the value of the project itself.
On the other hand, should the amount of tokens held by the project party be disclosed regularly? Should the financial status of the foundation be disclosed like financial reports? Should the project party's sale of the tokens they hold be disclosed? Should the market manipulation behaviors of exchanges, market makers, and so-called whales be regulated?
These are some very basic questions, but it seems that they either have not found a solution to these problems or are unwilling to solve them, after all, a market without any regulation other than pure fraud is the best tool for capital predation, just like the early financial market.
In the current market, the actual definition of Altcoins is unclear, and their prices are completely disconnected from the value of the projects themselves. Since this is the case, there is nothing wrong with retail investors choosing to engage in on-chain PvP.
The behavior of Trump issuing a token itself is not problematic. If it can set an example and clarify many of the ambiguous issues in the crypto, or make everything transparent, then issuing a token is also understandable, after all, the US does not have a law prohibiting the issuance of tokens.
The problem lies in the fact that this seemingly "casual" Meme token issuance behavior seems to be telling everyone: you can all issue tokens at will. No need for any rules, no need for any transparency, just simply state your plan, and you can even mention in the disclaimer that no class action can be brought. In this way, the behavior of using IP to issue tokens and then rug pull also seems to have no problem, and there is no legal prohibition on the issuer selling the tokens they hold.
It is worth noting that this was previously considered illegal by the previous SEC, such as misleading investors, but has been broken by Trump's "leading by example" behavior.
Of course, it is too early to draw a conclusion for the next four years based solely on the issuance of a Meme token. Web3 should not be restricted by overly strict regulations, but some basic concepts should also be defined to lay the foundation for more capital to invest based on the value of the projects themselves. Meme is one of the unique cultures of Web3, but not the whole of Web3, nor the most important part.
