The young crypto investors who fell in love with Donald Trump's embrace of the industry when he ran for president are now furious that he used them to enrich himself and his family.
Trump's personal venture into crypto revived the industry's image as a "scam," and crypto investors and enthusiasts are now calling him out for it, according to a Washington Post report.
Carl Runefelt, a crypto-focused streamer known as "the Moon" with 2.2 million TikTok followers, doesn't normally follow politics, but told the Post he was excited the first time he heard a major politician talk about bitcoin on the world stage.
According to the report, he bought extra bitcoin to celebrate the first pro-crypto U.S. president and picked up some of Trump's own token too.
Now $TRUMP has crashed, the crypto reserve Trump promised hasn't amounted to much, and the goodwill has curdled into resentment, according to the interviews.
"Trump was the hero in crypto, like, a couple of years ago, and now it's like the exact opposite," Runefelt said. "Crypto already has a branding of 'it's just a bunch of scams and scammers,' and this didn't help because now even the top guy did the same thing that people hate."
Some of the loudest complaints come from young male crypto enthusiasts who flocked to Trump in 2024 and are better equipped than most voters to understand the ventures that earned the president $1.4 billion last year.
"What they basically did was a money grab," said David, a South Carolina participant in a Bulwark focus group of independent and moderate 18-to-24-year-olds. "Why does he need to keep doing it? He's literally a billionaire. Like, how much more money does he need?"
Cole, from New Jersey, called the memecoin a "cash grab" meant to "prey" on younger followers.
"He's a grifter," Cole said. "Many things can be said about Donald Trump, but he knows how to make money. Not necessarily in an honest way."
