Famed YouTube investigator Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla, is harsh on Donald Trump’s latest foray into cryptocurrency: a meme coin called ‘Official Trump.’ In a video just released, Coffeezilla blasted the project as a historic grift involving the exploitation of President-elect supporters and a lack of transparency.
Linked on Truth Social and X (formerly Twitter), Trump announced Phantom backer Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz’s involvement with the coin along with announcing it on the X Network over Twitter. But Coffeezilla was dismayed at the venture.
“I hope to everything that I will wake up and find I’ve been deep faked,” he said.
Coffeezilla Criticizes Trump’s New Crypto Venture
It comes as the Trump family enters the crypto world with the World Liberty Financial (WLFI) token. They believe the new coin’s launch, right before Trump’s inauguration, is a very calculated move that will take advantage of political hype via a need for an injection of adrenaline.
Though the coin has a $13 billion market cap, Coffeezilla noted that the coin had no intrinsic value. The speculative appeal of trading volume alone has netted me over $12 million in fees.
The ownership structure of the project is one of the most contentious aspects of it. Coffeezilla estimates that 80% of the token supply is set aside for Trump’s inner circle, leaving only 20% for the public. Half of the public allocation was sent to the liquidity pool, and half was public allocated. We’re left with the remaining 80% that is vaguely labelled “CIC Digital 1, 2, 3,” leaving an open question as to what it will be used for.
This insider allocation will be unlocked over three years with lockup durations of 3 to 12 months. The timing, however, was utterly synchronous with Trump’s presidency, as Coffeezilla opined that it was trial and error to find ways to make financial gain while using Trump’s office. “It’s insiders who will make all the real money, who know in advance about the launch,” he predicted, saying that ordinary investors will suffer pretty badly from that.
He also criticized what he dubbed an unprecedented conflict of interest. “Inside of this, it’s so crazy to use the presidency as a tool to pump a meme coin and try to fatten yourselves up personally, insiders, and basically everybody but your normal base,” he added. He wondered if, faced with backlash, the Trump camp might underplay their role.
Notably, Trump isn’t this cryptocurrency controversy’s first brush with Trump. Late last fall, the Trump family helped launch WLFI, a platform for crypto lending and borrowing. If not directly associated with the ownership, the family was able to secure a money-making deal in promoting the project. Torn from criticism since, WLFI has been accused of offering non-resellable tokens that are good for the Trump-connected.
More concern was raised by the family’s relationship to crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, who joined WLFI as an advisor. Sun is said to have bought $30 million in tokens, which helped raise the platform’s visibility but raised ethical red flags.
It’s undeniable that Trump has major influence in the crypto space. At the same time, Bitcoin hit $100,000, a threshold that he claimed he had helped push over when he nominated Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Trump is also said to have as much as $5 million in Ethereum that has spiked in value since his election. The SEC, under Atkins, will release crypto-friendly regulations and could raise the value of tokens with ties to Trump.
Questions of ethics and finances swirl around his deepening ties to the cryptocurrency industry as Trump moves closer to assuming office. Surviving critics, like Coffeezilla, say projects like the Official Trump coin have been a microcosm of a bigger culture of using political clout for their own personal gain, to the detriment of ordinary investors who take the financial hits.
