Exclusive: Elizabeth Warren demands SEC investigate if Trump’s memecoin is an ‘illegal scam’ | CNN Business

Days before his inauguration in 2025, president-elect Donald Trump did something unusual: He launched a memecoin. That memecoin briefly exploded in value – and then crashed in an epic selloff that left nearly a million investors facing losses. Now, a pair of Senate Democrats are demanding Trump’s top Wall Street cop investigate the mess. Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal are calling for the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Trump’s memecoin “to detect any illegal fraud or unjust enrichment that the coin may have facilitated.” “We are concerned that President Trump’s memecoin scheme may constitute an illegal scam,” Warren and Blumenthal wrote on Monday to SEC Chair Paul Atkins in a letter shared first with CNN. The Trump coin, 80% of which was held by Trump Organization affiliates, reached a peak of about $9 billion on January 19, 2025. Memecoins, a highly volatile type of cryptocurrency typically inspired by pop culture and viral trends, don’t hold intrinsic value but can drastically soar — or plummet — in price. The $TRUMP cryptocurrency paid huge dividends to Trump, who promised to be America’s first crypto president