Donald Trump Jr. distances himself from $TRUMP meme coin: 'I wasn't involved'
Donald Trump Jr. is distancing himself from his father's meme coin — while defending the family's broader foray into crypto as a response to being frozen out of the traditional banking system.
"I wasn't involved in the meme coin," Trump Jr. said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "I'm more focused on the stablecoin, the bitcoin mining."
Meme coins are a class of cryptocurrency fueled by social media buzz and celebrity hype rather than real-world utility. They often skyrocket in value before crashing just as quickly — a pattern that's drawn concern from regulators, particularly when high-profile figures are involved.
President Donald Trump's $TRUMP token, 80% of which is controlled by the Trump Organization and affiliated entities, has become the centerpiece of the family's expanding crypto empire. Trump Jr. noted that the token was launched before his father returned to office.
The coin went live three days before the Inauguration, eventually soaring to a $15 billion market cap before erasing most of those gains. Still, the project creators get a fee for every trade.
Between January and the end of April, more than $324 million in trading fees were routed to wallets tied to the project's creators, according to Chainalysis. The token's code automatically directs a cut of each transaction to these addresses, allowing the team to profit from ongoing activity.
The blockchain analytics firm said it stopped tracking the president's meme token in early May, citing a need to refocus resources on paying clients.
The Trump family's deepening involvement in crypto has drawn widespread criticism — including concerns that a sitting president with ties to tokens could create new avenues for influence peddling or foreign capital flows.
Trump Jr. didn't dispute the potential for abuse but framed blockchain anonymity as a mitigating factor.
"You don't know who's actually doing any of these things," he said. "It's hard to influence if you don't actually know where this stuff's coming from."
In January, Tron blockchain founder Justin Sun upped his stake in World Liberty Financial's WLFI tokens to $75 million. A court filing the following month showed that Sun and the Securities and Exchange Commission were exploring a resolution to the regulator's civil fraud case against the crypto entrepreneur.
Sun later purchased the president's meme token, winning a contest for top holders, and raising his stake in Trump family-tied tokens to at least $97 million.
Trump Jr. emphasized that the family's broader embrace of crypto was not a vanity move, but a response to being debanked after his father's political rise.
He said he and his brother saw crypto as a more equitable system — one that could protect even well-established players like themselves from arbitrary exclusion.
"I could call any single banker in New York City," he said. "They'd pick up the phone, I'd be able to get a loan for whatever real estate project I was doing across the street. Then we got into politics, and all of a sudden they wouldn't take your call. You couldn't get financing. We were debanked."
That shift, he said, pushed the Trumps to explore decentralized alternatives "out of necessity."
That philosophy, he added, now underpins the family's stablecoin initiative USD1, launched through World Liberty Finance. The token claims to be fully backed by U.S. Treasurys and aims to serve as a compliant dollar-pegged asset.
Trump Jr. argued that stablecoins like USD1 could support U.S. financial dominance, not threaten it:
"They're literally some of the biggest buyers of U.S. Treasurys in the world, replacing a lot of the countries that would have been traditionally doing that," he said, referencing crypto firms like Tether, which controls nearly 70% of the global stablecoin market.
At nearly $120 billion in U.S. government debt on its books, according to its latest self-attestation, Tether now ranks among the top 20 holders of U.S. Treasurys — ahead of countries like Germany and the UAE.
"Stablecoins could be the savior of U.S. currency," he said.
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