It took a financial disclosure to make it official: Donald Trump reported roughly $636 million in income from his $TRUMP memecoin in 2025, making it his single largest revenue source that year. The token runs on Solana and was structured as a licensing royalty arrangement — not direct trading. First Lady Melania Trump separately disclosed around $6 million from NFTs and digital collectibles.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York responded with legislation that would ban the president, vice president, members of Congress, and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring cryptocurrencies of any kind. The bill takes direct aim at exactly the situation Trump created: a policymaker with sweeping influence over crypto regulation simultaneously running a token that stands to gain from favorable rules.
"Public officials and their spouses should not be issuing memecoins," Gillibrand said, calling the measure "a commonsense requirement that should get broad bipartisan support."
The timing is pointed. The White House had marked July 4 as its target date for passing the CLARITY Act — the sweeping legislation that would establish a comprehensive US framework for digital assets. That deadline came and went without a Senate vote. The bill cleared the House in 2025 and the Senate Banking Committee in May, but remains stalled over unresolved disputes on DeFi oversight, stablecoin rules, and ethics provisions like Gillibrand's. Prediction markets now price 2026 passage at 41-48%, down sharply from 82% earlier this year.
The logic behind the ethics provision is straightforward: a regulator should not also be a token issuer. Whether Congress acts on it before the August recess will say a great deal about how seriously Washington is taking its own crypto conflicts of interest.
