Cryptocurrency News Today TheBitTimes.com

A progressive think tank is asking the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to probe the legality of President Donald Trump’s new memecoin. The president launched the Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin in mid-January, days before he took office. The controversial crypto asset rapidly skyrocketed in value and is now the 41st-largest digital asset by market cap. In a new letter to the DOJ and the Office of Government Ethics, officials at the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen say the memecoin could be a violation of federal law regulating gifts to government officials. Public Citizen officials point out that the TRUMP website notes the memecoins “are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type.” “Accordingly, a person sending money for a Trump meme is not purchasing a tangible product. Instead, the person receives only a digital receipt (in a blockchain),...

Ethereum (ETH) founder Vitalik Buterin is concerned about the rise of “political coins,” memecoins such as MELANIA and TRUMP. Buterin says the crypto sector has spent the past year entering “a new order” where people cheer on the idea of creating a token for anything at any scale. “And so now is the time to talk about the difference between sugar-high short-term fun that is unwise to recommend to newbies, and long-term fulfillment and wealth-building. It is not about ‘fun is bad’, it is about the equivalent of modern hyperaddictive cellphone games, versus chess or World of Warcraft. Now is the time to talk about the fact that large-scale political coins cross a further line: they are not just sources of fun, whose harm is at most contained to mistakes made by voluntary participants, they are vehicles for unlimited political bribery, including from foreign nation-states.” US President Donald Trump and First Lady Mela...