Final week, crypto billionaire Justin Sun announced on X that he was buying $100 million price of President Donald Trump‘s memecoin, $TRUMP, which is able to quickly be tradeable on TRON, the blockchain Solar based in 2017.
“This transfer highlights our perception in collaborating throughout ecosystems to develop the crypto panorama with communities resembling @GetTrumpMemes,” Solar wrote, earlier than including, “$TRUMP on #TRON is the forex of #MAGA!”
It’s simply the newest headline-grabbing buy for Solar, who made waves within the artwork world for buying Maurizio Cattelan’s Comic—the famed duct-taped banana—at Sotheby’s in December for $6.2 million. (He later ate the banana.) Then, in April, a New York Occasions investigation into World Liberty Monetary, the cryptocurrency agency majority-owned by a Trump household company entity, revealed that Solar had spent $75 million on $WLFI cash.
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Solar has additionally been embroiled in authorized turmoil over a wholly completely different buy. In February, Solar sued billionaire art collector and music mogul David Geffen over the Alberto Giacometti sculpture Le Nez (1949–65), which Solar has mentioned he purchased in a non-public deal. Geffen countersued, claiming that the work was stolen from his assortment by an worker and fraudulently offered. Solar has known as for Geffen at hand over the sculpture.
Trump and firm launched $TRUMP simply days earlier than his second inauguration in January, with the coin’s worth skyrocketing over 300 % in days. By March, the worth of the coin had plummeted, with traders shedding roughly $12 million. As ARTnews wrote upon the $TRUMP launch, meme cash, which are sometimes labeled as “artworks” to skirt securities laws, typically collapse as rapidly as they rise in worth.
Nonetheless $TRUMP appeared to stablize with a market cap of $1.85 billion as of press time—a far cry from its inauguration peak of over $9 billion, and later peaks of $4.29 billion in February and $3.1 billion in late April.
Nevertheless, ethics watchdogs have repeatedly argued that Trump’s possession of $TRUMP has given the president an unprecedented methodology of facilitating graft and corruption. Most critcized was a Could 22 dinner and White Home tour that Trump gave to main consumers of $TRUMP—Solar was an attendee—which spurred $148 million in purchases of the coin, according to the Guardian.
“Self-enrichment is strictly what the founders feared most in a frontrunner—that’s why they put two separate prohibitions on self-benefit into the structure,” former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig advised the Guardian final month. “Trump’s taking advantage of his presidential memecoin is a textbook instance of what the framers needed to keep away from.”
“I’ve by no means seen such open corruption in any fashionable authorities wherever,” Steven Levitsky, a professor of authorities at Harvard College, additionally advised the Guardian.
As for what Solar may truly be attempting to purchase together with his $TRUMP investments, CNBC has a rundown of the billionaire’s crypto-entanglements with the present president.
