Donald Trump’s newly created cryptocurrency could open the door to individuals, companies and foreign governments who want to “pay off” a president, Catherine Rampell has told CNN.
Launched on Friday (17/1), the president-elect’s meme coin, also known as $TRUMP, drew in billions of dollars in trading volume over the weekend, becoming the 18th-biggest cryptocurrency with a coin value of over $50.
The digital token’s branding includes an image from his attempted assassination in July and the slogan: “Join the Trump Community. This is History in the Making!”
But critics have pointed out that the newly-created coin could open the door to rampant corruption and foreign interference, with journalist Rampell saying other governments will “no longer need to pretend to stay at a Trump hotel in order to give money to Donald Trump”.
Ahead of the US election in November, Trump’s campaign team has called for an investigation into what it claimed was “blatant foreign interference” in the election by the Labour Party.
The complaint to the US federal electoral commission claimed there had been “interference” in the “form of apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the UK” which had been “accepted” by Kamala Harris’s campaign.
It references a Washington Post report that suggested “strategists linked to Britain’s Labour Party have been offering advice to Kamala Harris about how to earn back disaffected voters and run a winning campaign from the centre left”.
It also mentions a Telegraph report that suggested Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, his director of communications, “attended a convention in Chicago and met with Ms Harris’s campaign team”.
There is no evidence the Labour Party had made any financial contributions to the Democrat campaign, something that is prohibited under US law.
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