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the The crypto market has been crashing latelyalthough the price of bitcoin is now back around $70,000 after sinking to around $60,000 yesterday. In response, the Democrats ridicule Trump’s embrace of crypto that began during his 2024 presidential campaign, and the president’s own TRUMP memecoin is now down almost 95% from the all-time high it hit during his inauguration. MELANIA memecoin looks worse than the first lady, that is now below 99% from his own long time.
– Democrats (@TheDemocrats) February 5, 2026
On top of the sharp decline seen in bitcoin and the larger crypto market, the Trump administration has been accused by many of conducting various corrupt deals and offering pay-to-play schemes in terms of favorable regulatory policy for crypto insiders. TRUMP memecoin is part of it, as crypto entrepreneur and investor Justin Sun is major holdings in memecoin as part of a letter sent to House Democrats to the SEC regarding concerns over the lack of regulatory enforcement in the crypto industry that occurred during Trump’s second term in office.
On top of the concerns around potential influence buying through memecoin, there is also the accusation of “no such corruption” around the apology given by the former CEO of the crypto exchange Binance, the lacks a similar apology for Bitcoin developers to have no business dealings with Trump, and more recent concerns about a $500 million investment by United Arab Emirates National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the Trump-affiliated crypto venture World Liberty Financial.
Throughout this time, the Trump family was also reportedly having fun $1.4 billion in revenue from their crypto businesses.
Earlier this week, US House Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) sent a letter to World Liberty Financial co-founder Zack Witkoff and United States Attorney for the District of Delaware Benjamin Wallace outlined various concerns about the $500 million deal, which some Democrats also called corrupt. The main concerns are related to how the deal will affect US export policy when it comes to AI chips, objections related to national security, and potential ties with Chinese interests.
Notably, Witkoff is the son of Steve Witkoff, who served in the Trump administration as the United States’ special envoy to the Middle East and special envoy for peacekeeping missions. “The reported details of the Emirati investment of $500 million in WLF are as shocking as they are scandalous,” Khanna wrote in his letter to Wallace.
Trump’s promise to provide regulatory clarity to the crypto industry through the CLARITY Act has also been threatened recently, as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced the company’s withdrawal of support from the bill after seeing a draft copy of the Senate version of the law. According to Armstrong, no crypto bill is better than what he has seen.
In addition to losing support from Coinbase, Democrats have long argued that ethics protections should be added to the bill to prevent the kind of ethically-troublesome crypto profiteering the Trump administration has seen so far. According to a Politico reportthe recent $500 million World Liberty Financial deal has further fueled concerns about these ethical issues. “This latest blatant bribery from the UAE, which puts our national security at risk, means that crypto supporters should look no further than the higher pile of corruption,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Of course, the $190 million in cash held by crypto-focused super PAC Fairshake for use in the upcoming midterm elections makes opposing the industry’s preferences an uphill battle.
The lack of regulatory clarity, especially when it comes to protections for developers, is especially frustrating for those more interested in Bitcoin than centralized aspect of the crypto sectorlike stablecoins and exchange that offers crypto token trading. In a statement about the current state of the CLARITY Act shared with Gizmodo, Bitcoin Policy Institute Head of Policy Zack Shapiro said, “Open-source developers writing and publishing code should not be treated as regulated financial intermediaries, and individuals should be able to hold and transact their own assets without being forced into custodial chokepoints.”
