Memecoin mania, $TRUMP style
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QUICK FIX
Dogecoin. Dogwifhat. Fartcoin.
These were once the dominant players in the penny stock-like corner of the cryptocurrency markets that plays home to memecoins — a risky type of digital asset that, unlike its big brother counterparts bitcoin and ether, has no inherent value.
And then came President Donald Trump's $TRUMP.
Memecoins have long been associated with online jokes. (The Elon Musk-beloved Dogecoin was famously launched as one.) But the $TRUMP token — now the fourth-most valuable memecoin in the world, per CoinMarketCap — has set off outrage in Washington. And the uproar is reaching new highs as dozens of its biggest investors head to Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, this evening for a private dinner and reception with the president himself.
Lawmakers, including Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Sam Liccardo of California, plan to call on Trump today to release the guest list. Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, is set to roll out a proposed ban on presidential memecoins, the latest addition to an already long line of similar bills. And several critics will be protesting the dinner tonight.
'This is the Mount Everest of American corruption,' Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, told your host for a new piece out this morning. 'This isn't about raising money for a campaign. This is about personal profit, and what he's selling is influence on himself and his Cabinet and the U.S. government.'
Open to the top 220 $TRUMP holders, assuming they passed a background check, the dinner is the latest manifestation of Trump's still relatively recent embrace of cryptocurrencies — a breed of financial product whose value he once warned was 'based on thin air.' Among its expected attendees are a former online poker player, crypto billionaire Justin Sun and dozens of other traders.
His crypto pivot — or his come-to-Satoshi moment, one might say — has been welcome news to the industry. Following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, the crypto industry became a pariah in Washington whose future was clouded by a series of lawsuits, some existential, from the Gary Gensler-led SEC.
But Trump has become crypto's unexpected savior, as our own Jasper Goodman presciently wrote last January. And while crypto lobbyists and officials worried that his personal forays into the market could hurt the industry's policy agenda, the reality appears to be that crypto may be able to have its cake and eat it, too. Case in point: The Senate now appears to be preparing for a final vote on stablecoin legislation in the coming weeks, after a bipartisan group of lawmakers advanced the bill earlier this week.
Yet, even then, the memecoin is quickly becoming a leading front in the swirl of concerns over Trump's business empire. And the concerns aren't dying down.
'When Hunter Biden was trying to profit off of his family's name, people legitimately raised questions,' former House Ethics Committee Chair Charlie Dent told your host. 'I'm not saying Hunter Biden did anything illegal or that any of the Trump family members are doing anything illegal, but it all has a stench to it that turns off a lot of people.'
IT'S THURSDAY — Are you heading to the $TRUMP dinner tonight? Let me know, I can keep you anonymous! dharty@politico.com. And as always, send your tips, suggestions and personnel moves to Sam at ssutton@politico.com.
Driving the day
Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler speaks at a Punchbowl event at 9 a.m. … Senate Banking holds a hearing on the Defense Production Act at 10 a.m. … Existing home sales data out at 10 a.m.
Identity crisis — Trump and the GOP may be adopting a more populist tone, and considering a series of similarly minded proposals. But Megan Messerly reports that the numbers inside the president's big, beautiful bill 'are showing that for all the nods the GOP has made to its new populist base, its biggest policy swing remains weighted toward helping higher earners and businesses pay fewer taxes.'
— Almost there: 'Republicans stayed overwhelmingly united on a test vote to advance the massive domestic-policy measure shortly before 3 a.m., paving the way for a vote on final passage later in the day — just in time to meet Speaker Mike Johnson's Memorial Day deadline,' Katherine Tully-McManus reports.
— And they got there: Early Thursday, House Republicans pushed through the megabill with a 215-214 vote, Katherine reports, noting it's 'a major victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, who largely kept his conference together after days of around-the-clock negotiations with holdouts.'
One reason Wall Street is sweating BBB? It could hit big donors— A provision of the GOP tax bill imposes new taxes on large private foundations that would potentially slap the philanthropic efforts of industry heavyweights.
'They're looking at the elites versus the non-elites. There's a lot of money in foundations who would be defined as the elite, and therefore they like to see that money go elsewhere,' said Lawson Bader, the president and CEO of DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund and 501(c)(3) that's a powerful force in Republican fundraising circles. This 'seems to be really nothing more than a money grab that is — I think — tinged with some political DNA that has me uncomfortable.'
'The time would seem to be right' — Trump said Wednesday that he is weighing taking mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public after more than 15 years of government control, Victoria Guida reports.
— 'Such a move would be a massive shift for the housing market, where Fannie and Freddie play a key role by buying mortgages from lenders and selling them as securities to investors. They back roughly half the $16 trillion mortgage market,' Victoria writes.
Wall Street
Bad day — Stocks fell and bond yields soared after a weak auction for 20-year Treasury notes, according to The Wall Street Journal. Worries about the U.S. fiscal outlook — which have been exacerbated by turmoil around the GOP budget bill — also weighed on investors. The dollar fell.
'The soft 20-year auction fueled additional weakness,' said Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, per Bloomberg. 'It has been a theme all week, starting with the Moody's downgrade. Additionally, there is the deficit/budget debate being fought in the background of this environment.'
No way — The Trump administration is brushing aside calls from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to ease restrictions on chip exports to China, Bloomberg's Michael Shepard and Edward Ludlow report. 'When it comes to inside China, I do think there is still bipartisan and broad concern about what can happen to these GPUs once they're physically inside' the country, said Sriram Krishnan, White House senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence.
International Players Banff-em — Provisions of the tax bill would punish global companies headquartered in 'discriminatory foreign countries,' providing U.S. tax authorities broad discretion over what that means. At the G7 meeting in Banff, that bill language could reignite a battle over the global minimum tax rate that was agreed upon during President Joe Biden's administration, The NYT's Alan Rappeport reports.
Golden age of systemic risk — Federal Reserve Bank of Boston economists are warning that the banking sector's ties to private credit could pose a risk to the U.S. financial system, according to The FT's Eric Platt.
Crypto
Stablecoin bill forges ahead — A landmark bill that would create a regulatory framework for dollar-pegged stablecoins garnered the support of three more senators during a procedural vote on Wednesday, Jasper Goodman reports. The motion to proceed passed 69-3. A vote on final passage is expected after the Memorial Day recess.
— The bill's sponsors — Sens. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Tim Scott(R-S.C.) and Kirsten Gillibrand(D-N.Y.). — filed an amendment that would incorporate negotiated changes sought by pro-crypto Democratic holdouts, as well as a ban on interest-bearing stablecoins.
Bitcoin bulls rejoice — The original cryptocurrency hit a new all-time high of more than $110,000 Wednesday. Per CNBC's Tanaya Macheel, crypto exchange Nexo's cofounder, Antoni Trenchev, attributed the jump to 'an array of favorable ingredients in the macro cauldron.'
At the regulators
New slate — Kristin Johnson became the last of the Biden-era Commodity Futures Trading Commission members to announce their intention to step down from the derivatives regulator, Declan reports. Her eventual exit will likely leave the Wall Street regulator with just one person on its usually five-member commission.
Big lawsuit — Fidelity National Financial is suing over a Biden-era rule that requires people involved in real estate closings to report to Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network about all-cash sales or transfers of residential property to trusts or other legal entities, Michael Stratford reports.
ODDS AND ENDS
First in MM: New bond council — The Bond Dealers of America are launching a new Council on Bond Market Structure that's intended to advance market-driven solutions to market structure challenges facing both the institutional and retail bond markets. The initiative 'will focus on direct engagement with policymakers to ensure that regulatory policies keep pace with market evolution,' said the organization's CEO, Michael Nicholas.
On The Hill
Loeffler's congressional debut — Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler told the Senate Small Business Committee on Wednesday that she is committed to staffing field offices as the agency goes through a major restructuring and expects to lay off 2,700 employees, Katherine Hapgood reports.
During Loeffler's first appearance before a congressional committee since her nomination, Democrats tore into her over SBA's comparison of the Biden administration and Trump administration's first 100 days in terms of small manufacturer loans, as well as tariffs and reducing staff while taking on the country's student loan portfolio.
FIRM clears both committees — House Financial Services passed the FIRM act Wednesday, which Senate Banking passed in March, Katherine reports. The bill would eliminate reputational risk as a component of the supervision of depository institutions.
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