Trump begins selling new meme coins days ahead of inauguration

President-elect Donald J. Trump and his family on Friday began selling a cryptocurrency token with an image of Mr. Trump picked up from the July assassination attempt a potentially lucrative new business that ethics experts attacked as a blatant attempt to cash in on the office he is about to reoccupy.

Unveiled just days before his second inauguration, the venture is the latest in a series of moves by Mr. Trump, blurring the line between his government role and his family’s continued efforts to benefit from his power and global fame. It’s another sign that the Trump family will be much less hesitant in this second term to bend or break traditional ethical boundaries.

Mr. Trump himself announced the launch of his new business Friday night on his social media platform, amid announcements of filling key federal government positions. He calls the token $Trump and sells it with the slogan, “Join the Trump community. This is history in the making!”

The venture was organized by CIC Digital LLC, a subsidiary of the Trump Organization, which already have sold a number of others kinds of merchandise like Trump-branded sneakers, fragrances, and even digital trading cards.

But this latest venture brings Mr. Trump and his family directly into the world of selling cryptocurrency, which is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Trump recently revealed that he intended to appoint a cryptocurrency advocate as SEC chairman.

A disclosure on the website that sells the tokens says that CIC Digital and its affiliates own 80 percent of the supply of the new Trump tokens that will be gradually released over the next three years and that they will be paid ” trading revenue” as tokens are sold.

Mr. The move by Trump and his family was immediately condemned by ethics lawyers, who said they could not recall a more explicit for-profit effort by an incoming president.

“It’s literally monetizing the presidency — creating a financial instrument for people to transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office,” said Adav Noti, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit ethics group. “It’s more than unprecedented.”

Eric Trump, who helps run the Trump Organization’s business operations, said Saturday that this offer was part of a new and growing business sector the Trump family has entered.

“I am extremely proud of what we continue to accomplish in crypto,” Eric Trump said in a statement to The New York Times. “$Trump is currently the hottest digital meme on earth.” He added: “This is just the beginning.”

But even some in the cryptocurrency industry were quick to criticize the new token.

“Trump owning 80 percent and timing the launch hours before the inauguration is predatory and many will likely be hurt by it,” wrote Nick Tomaino, a crypto venture capitalist and former director at Coinbase, one of the largest crypto trading platforms, in a social media posting on Saturday.

At the end of last year, the president-elect and his three sons had already lent their name to another cryptocurrency startup called World Liberty Financial, an arrangement that included a cut of token sales to the Trump family in return for helping with promoting the new brand.

But the members of the Trump family with World Liberty Financial actually weren’t owners of the platform or officers of the company.

There are other cryptocurrency coins in the market based on Mr. Trump, which is not directly associated with his family as the new Trump Meme. Typically, these so-called meme coins – which were born when coins were created as a joke inspired by an internet meme or cartoonish animal faces – are largely worthless and traded more as a hobby.

With this new venture, companies associated with Mr. Trump’s family a direct financial stake in the value of the new tokens and in the volume of their sales, which quickly increased after going on the market.

“GetTrumpMemes.com is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign or any political office or government agency,” the company’s website says, adding: “Trump Memes is intended to serve as an expression of support for and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol ‘$TRUMP’.”

The legal disclosures say the tokens are not intended to be viewed as “an investment opportunity, investment contract or security of any kind.” But trading in them on the cryptocurrency markets began immediately, increasing the value of each token from $7 to nearly $30 as of noon on Saturday.

This suggested that the so-called fully diluted value of all tokens as of Saturday at noon was $30 billiona figure obtained less than a day after the token went public, according to CoinMarketCap, a website that tracks cryptocurrency trading.

Mr. Trump and his family are clear in marketing the new token that the image chosen for the coin was inspired by the July assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.

“President Trump faced death and came up fighting!” the site promoting the tokens says.

Cryptocurrency markets tend to be highly volatile, in part because the tokens are not backed by any tangible assets. The home page of Mr. Trump’s new venture includes a comprehensive collection of disclaimers limits the ability of anyone who buys the token to bring a class action lawsuit related to it and warns buyers that “Trump Memes can be extremely volatile and price fluctuations in cryptocurrencies can affect the price.”

Mr. Trump has already made it clear that he will work to promote the cryptocurrency industry.

He has announced his intention to appoint regulators who will lift restrictions on the sale of new tokens and ties between cryptocurrency companies and other more traditional financial firms.

This contrasts with efforts by Biden-era regulators to tightly regulate the industry, of a concern that a sudden crash in the value of cryptocurrency could potentially lead to a future financial crash.