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Commentary: Crypto was already in bad odor before jumping into bed with Trump. Now it smells worse
One problem that promoters of cryptocurrencies have faced since the asset class first emerged is that its reputation stinks.
Crypto trading has become identified by regulators and in the public mind as a haven for scams, theft and other forms of sharp practice. The FBI, in its most recent annual report on cryptocurrency, found that crypto-related fraud has exploded. Criminality is “pervasive” in the field, the agency warned.
The elusive use case for crypto assets seemed to have been narrowed down to facilitating criminal fraud, ransomware attacks, drug and human trafficking.
Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures are nothing more than a fig leaf for pay offs from foreign nationals.
— Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)
Then came Donald Trump. During the presidential campaign and after his election, crypto promoters thought they were entering the nirvana of officially recognized legitimacy.
Trump signaled that he would end government regulatory initiatives on crypto, “in order to promote United States leadership in digital assets and financial technology while protecting economic liberty,” to quote the executive order he issued Jan. 23, effectively wiping out federal regulations on the class.
Things aren’t working out as they hoped. Since Trump returned to the presidency, his and his family’s involvement in crypto-related deals has critics charging that crypto has become an entirely new path for official corruption and conflicts of interest in the White House.
“Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures are nothing more than a fig leaf for payoffs from foreign nationals & foreign gov’ts,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tweeted on May 7. Blumenthal’s target was the offer of a sit-down private dinner with Trump scheduled for May 22 at his Virginia golf club, and personal tours of the White House for the biggest buyers of $TRUMP, a “memecoin” assiduously promoted by Trump and his family.
The price of the coin soared to about $74 on Jan. 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration. It immediately fell in value, though its price has been propped up by the offer of the dinner and tours; the most recent quotes place it at about $13. The top 220 holders of the Trump coin, who are entitled to the dinner, spent nearly $148 million for the privilege, according to an estimate by Reuters.
More than half of the biggest holders appear to be foreign entities, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. That implies that the purchases might be designed to circumvent federal laws barring foreigners from making political contributions in the U.S.
Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts demanded that the federal Office of Government Ethics, an independent executive branch agency, open an inquiry into the “severe risk that President Trump and other officials may be engaging in ‘pay to play’ corruption by selling presidential access to individuals or entities, to include foreign nationals and corporate actors with vested interests in federal action, while personally enriching the President and his family.”
DWF, a crypto firm based in the United Arab Emirates, announced last month that it had bought $25 million in coins issued by the Trump-affiliated firm World Liberty Financial, in part to “enhance regulatory engagement with U.S. policymakers.” Freight Technologies, a Houston logistics company, announced April 30 that it had borrowed $20 million to buy Trump coins, calling the transaction “an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced, and free trade between Mexico and the US.”
The unease has spread to Republicans on Capitol Hill, who fear that the Trumps’ crypto deals will undermine their efforts to enact crypto-friendly regulations.
“This gives me pause,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), a leader in the legislative movement to pass a pro-crypto law, told NBC News. “Even what may appear to be ‘cringey’ with regard to meme coins, it’s legal, and what we need to do is have a regulatory framework that makes this more clear, so we don’t have this Wild West scenario.”
Trump’s activities already have derailed, if temporarily, the so-called GENIUS Act, which would regulate a form of cryptocurrency known as “stablecoins,” which are supposedly pegged to the value of underlying currencies such as dollars. Schiff and eight other Senate Democrats who had supported the measure have bailed on it, making passage in its current form virtually impossible.
Democrats in both chambers have introduced the “End Crypto Corruption Act,” which would bar the president, vice president, members of Congress and high-level executive branch appointees from issuing, sponsoring or endorsing any “cryptocurrency, meme coin, token, non-fungible token, stablecoin, or other digital asset that is sold for remuneration.”
Even some crypto promoters are no happier than the politicians. “They’re plumbing new depths of idiocy with the memecoin launch,” Nic Carter, a crypto investor and Trump supporter, told Politico.
As a crypto category, memecoins are disdained even by many participants in the field. They generally have even less utiilty or authenticity than mainstream cryptocurrencies, often originate as joke investments, and ride waves of pure hype. The Trump coin has no discernible value apart from its identification with Trump himself.
I asked the White House for comment on the accusations of corruption and received this reply from spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt: “President Trump is compliant with all conflict-of-interest rules, and only acts in the best interests of the American public.”
The memecoin isn’t Trump’s only venture into crypto, though some of his arrangements seem designed to give him plausible deniability if legal or ethics questions are raised. World Liberty Financial, which markets a crypto token designated $WLFI and a stablecoin designated USD1, is 60% owned by Trump and members of his family, who are entitled to up to 75% of the proceeds of sales of $WLFI.
The firm’s website features an image of Trump striking a heroic pose and says the WLFI token is “inspired by Donald J. Trump.” In the small print it asserts, however, that “any references to or quotes or imagery attributed to or associated with Donald J. Trump or his family members should not be construed as an endorsement or representation or warranty.”
Crypto investors really stepped up to the plate with political donations during the 2024 election cycle. Fairshake, the super PAC representing the class, spent nearly $41 million in contributions. That included $13 million to defeat two congressional candidates in Democratic primaries, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York). Both were known to favor stricter regulation of the asset class, and both lost their races.
The biggest crypto firms spent lavishly in 2023 and 2024 to fatten Fairshake’s war chest, which collected more than $162 million in that time frame; Coinbase contributed $46.5 million, Ripple Labs, $45 million and Andreessen Horowitz, a major crypto investor, $44 million. Much of the total was funneled to two other crypto-related political action committees, according to federal election records.
After the election, many of the firms, like more traditional businesses, made contributions of $1 million or more to Trump’s inauguration fund.
One can hardly deny that the crypto camp has gotten its money’s worth from the Trump administration so far. The Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped or deferred more than a dozen enforcement cases against Ripple, Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken and other crypto promoters.
The largest victory arguably belongs to Coinbase, the biggest crypto trading platform in the U.S. The SEC in 2023 charged the firm with running an unlawful trading exchange and marketing unregistered securities. The case reflected the SEC’s position that what crypto firms are marketing are securities by a different name, and thus need to be registered as securities so buyers and sellers get the same legal protections as stock and bond investors.
A federal judge in New York cleared the enforcement action to move ahead in 2024, after finding that the SEC had made a plausible case that Coinbase was operating illegally. The SEC dropped the case in February. Coinbase had asserted that the SEC was wrong “on the facts and the law,” and that “the case should never have been filed in the first place.”
Earlier this month, the agency settled its case against Ripple, which it had charged in 2020 with having raised $1.3 billion through unregistered securities. As part of the settlement, the SEC agreed to return to Ripple $75 million of a $125-million penalty it held in escrow. The settlement elicited a crisp rebuke from Commissioner Caroline A. Crenshaw, a member of the commission’s Democratic minority.
Crenshaw noted that the deal was part and parcel of the SEC’s effective abandonment of crypto regulation. “This settlement, alongside the programmatic disassembly of the SEC’s crypto enforcement program, does a tremendous disservice to the investing public,” she wrote.
That won’t be the end of the deregulation drive. On April 7, Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche — who was Trump’s defense attorney in the New York criminal case that resulted in guilty verdicts on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — ordered an end to Justice Department regulatory cases based on interpreting crypto assets as securities or commodities. That closed down the government’s principal regulatory initiative against crypto promoters.
Blanche directed the DOJ’s Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit to “cease cryptocurrency enforcement,” and disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, “effective immediately.”
There doesn’t seem to be any sign that Trump’s involvement with crypto will slow down even as he disembowels the government’s regulatory capacity over crypto ventures.
World Liberty Financial recently announced that Abu Dhabi would use its stablecoin to invest $2 billion in Binance, a multinational crypto firm that pleaded guilty and paid a $4.3-billion penalty in 2023 on charges of financial crimes including money laundering. Binance’s chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, also pleaded guilty and spent four months in U.S. prison.
Last month, the SEC put its civil case against Binance on hold for at least 60 days.
On its investor advice webpage, the SEC used to post a warning on its website about crypto. “Trendy investments are especially ripe for fraudsters so be aware there is a real risk of fraud,” it said. “Cryptocurrencies may be today’s shiny, new opportunity but there are serious risks involved.”
That page has been taken down.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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