- Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, believes the TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins weakened the bipartisan support for crypto bills last year.
Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson, now CEO of Input Output (IO), didn’t mince words while talking about the bottlenecks that derailed the passage of crypto bills last year. He blamed the short-sightedness of US President Donald Trump and his family in launching their memecoins, particularly the TRUMP and MELANIA tokens.
Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson on TRUMP and MELANIA Memecoin’s Wrong Timing
Hoskinson told CoinDesk in an interview that 2025 would have been an “extremely different” year for crypto if it weren’t for the ill-timed launch of the controversial tokens. He explained that the Trump-linked memecoins made crypto look bad and corrupt, aligning his view with public concerns about conflicts of interest stemming from their self-serving nature, which heavily favored the First Family.
Additionally, the CEO of IO highlighted that launching the controversial crypto projects compromised the bipartisan window for the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act and Digital Asset Market Clarity Act last year. Although the GENIUS Act eventually made it into law in the middle of 2025, he believes its passage in the legislation would have been smoother if it weren’t for the issues that became more apparent in the TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins.
The crypto community were divided over the release of the infamous memecoins last year. Even die-hard crypto advocates and industry executives, including lawyer John Deaton and Strive Director Pierre Rochard, cried foul at the glaring conflicts of interest surrounding the projects. Others blamed them for kickstarting other ill-conceived crypto projects involving politicians, such as the LIBRA token linked to Argentine President Javier Milei and the recent NYC Token connected to former New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Many people who commented about the interview agreed with Hoskinson. They claimed that the Trump memecoins only fueled the critics’ narrative against the crypto industry.
On the other hand, others like X Finance Bull argued that crypto is bigger than any single launch. They pointed out that memecoins rarely delay legislation on their own.
So, instead of blaming memes, those who disagreed with Hoskinson stated that people should be looking at the lobbying dynamics in Congress and the broader regulatory skepticism. Several commented that if bills could be affected by mere memes, then they must be flawed from the very start. Furthermore, such insinuations only expose the shallow support and poor strategy of the proponents of the crypto bills.
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