First lady not named in suit in which investors allege Meteora executives created coin they knew would plummet

The designers of a cryptocurrency launched by the US first lady, Melania Trump, in January were accused in court filings on Tuesday of orchestrating a pump-and-dump scheme.

The $MELANIA coins were released for just a few cents each on 19 January, the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated as US president. In addition to $MELANIA, Donald Trump launched $TRUMP a few hours before his inauguration.

Within hours, the $MELANIA coin’s price soared to $13.73.

  • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Aren’t all meme coins just pump and dump? People only buy them because of made up hype and they know they will eventually be worthless

    • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social
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      20 hours ago

      Cryptocurrency seems to serve virtually no purpose outside of functioning as a technically legal means of scamming people the way people got scammed in the stock market before the great depression.

      The SEC exists for a reason. Yet people willingly “invest” in 1s and 0s on a computer somewhere, with no underlying business value, and that also offer none of the protections that come with putting money into securities. Its literally 99.9% confidence schemes and pump and dumps. Theres hardly even any differentiation in the scams

      • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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        6 hours ago

        It is actually quite convenient for moving large sums of money around quickly, without waiting on “trusted” third parties. Like transferring a large chunk of money between banks takes several days to a couple weeks depending on the amount. Crypto takes minutes, regardless of the amount.

        Too slow currently to be a point of sale currency, but much faster than banking. There’s also the trust less, self enforcing contracts that remove the need for escrow or middlemen.