Trump’s Political Career Crashed Last Night. So Did His Crypto.

Alex Brandon/AP Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. The Trumps have enjoyed a highly lucrative two years, riding a wave of crypto deals and other business enterprises into billions of dollars in new wealth. But around 7:10 p.m. ET Tuesday night—as some of the early election results were just beginning to stream in—the first family’s fortunes changed. That’s when markets started turning against some of the Trumps’ most valuable ventures. The drop started with the price of the $TRUMP meme coin—an essentially useless bit of crypto that the president helped create shortly before returning to office. Truthfully, $TRUMP has been a bit of a dud in terms of an investment for awhile—after hitting a high of $74, it has slid farther and farther; it was hovering around $1.60 through Tuesday afternoon and early evening. But then it dropped precipitously. At 7:10 p.m. $TRUMP could be purchased for $1.58 per coin. By 7:20, it had slid to $1.53, and despite some ups and downs, it has mostly continued falling. By 12:50 p.m. Wednesday, it had hit an all-time low of $1.23, a decline of more than 20 percent in less than a day. (It’s recovered slightly since then.) Something similar happened with the WLFI token—a crypto asset created by World Liberty Financial, the Trumps’ decentralized finance company. The token, which can be bought and sold but is mainly used to vote on decisions about the company’s operations, was worth about 5.1 cents at 7:10 p.m. By 8 p.m. it was worth 4.6 cents. The price briefly recovered overnight but plummeted again Wednesday, hovering around 4.7 cents by mid-afternoon. Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the president’s Truth Social platform, also took a nose-dive in after-hours trading, beginning a little after 7 p.m. The stock closed Tuesday at $5.95 per share. It opened Wednesday morning at $5.37. By Wednesday afternoon, it had fallen below $4.60, an all-time low. There are lots of reasons these prices could have collapsed—the $TRUMP meme coin is arguably completely pointless to begin with. But it might be related to the sudden empowerment of Congressional Democrats. The fact that at least the House of Representatives, and quite possibly the Senate, would now be controlled by Democrats was becoming quite clear by about 7:10 p.m. So to was the realization that Democrats would suddenly be armed with subpoena power and the ability to grill anyone under oath on just about any subject. And by midnight, the full scale of the political earthquake was coming into focus, as news outlets called the Senate for Democrats. If the Trump financial products have served as a way for people to win the president’s attention, ingratiate themselves, or just get as close as possible, the rebuke voters delivered to Trump last night instantly makes him, and his businesses, a less attractive investment. Just last month, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and a group of his Senate colleagues sent a letter to the White House demanding that Trump turn over information related to an event he’s holding later this month at his DC-area golf course—the top holders of the $TRUMP meme coin are invited to what has been marketed as “the most exclusive dinner in the world.” Attendees will get to bask in the presence of Trump and three unnamed “legends”—”The World’s power players”—according to the company behind the coin, which has a licensing deal with Trump. Schiff demanded that Trump preserve records—a hint of future legal action, but also a somewhat boilerplate request that, last month, didn’t have a lot of teeth. That request now seems much more ominous for Trump—and likely discouraging for people who thought they could use investments in Trump-linked assets as a way to gain access. And it won’t just be Senate Democrats pursuing Trump’s businesses. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Dem on the House’s Oversight Committee, put out a brief, two-word statement Tuesday night: “Lawyer up.”