In what is called the investment game, and in the face of what is often a harsh reality, some wide-eyed novice investors doggedly persist in believing that by mimicking rich, powerful and especially unscrupulous insider behavior, a modest portion of that fabulous insider wealth might spill over and end up settling in their amateur accounts. No matter how many times such a strategy fails, some will continue to gamble inside the treacherous investment markets and virtually give away much of whatever wealth they once owned, and likely could ill afford to lose. A recent glaring example of broad investor financial give-away ruin is exhibited in Trump’s crypto memecoin “caper.”

You will note that Trump appoints the people who control the crypto marketplace, but also, he has his own crypto memecoin that is bought and sold in that marketplace. In the face of this structural absurdity, the administration laughingly maintains he has no conflict of interest. The facts say otherwise. Somehow the Trump family made $634 million in royalty sales to the public of Trump’s $trump coin as part of their family’s $1.4 billion digital asset gain over the last year. Initially, wildly popular with buyers, Trump’s meme “souvenir” coin quickly ballooned to a $15 billion valuation, only to (predictably) crash back, losing 98 percent of its value and sliding down to $400 million (as of July 6, 2026).

While the Trumps have made $ billions on their short-term crypto venture, as of July 1, nearly one million people have lost $3.8 billion (per Google AI) on essentially what is an insider Trump memecoin boondoggle.

Trust me, only I can fix it—for me

It is long past time we stop trusting Donald Trump. He and his family claim to build. But in their seemingly endless cons, rather than build, what they have really hammered is the public trust. With multiple corrupt ventures and legions of unscrupulous lawyers to hide behind, the Trumps have relentlessly scammed Americans at every turn.  Be it through multiple bankruptcies (wine, steaks, casinos, etc.), stock manipulations, a phony Veteran charity, a fraudulent university, recent cryptocurrency shenanigans, tax cheating, political corruption, extortion, pardon payoffs or Donny’s utterly tasteless, stumbling vanity projects—all are a stubborn stain on the presidency. We will need lots of bleach (think COVID) and peroxide (think algae) over an extended time to flush and wash out what has been and continues to be his ruinous influence on what yet remains of the rule of law.

I believe that working together, we, the American people, can still recapture some form of the democracy of our recent past. We can still make democracy greater again, and with the departure of the Trump stain, finally get to work on the real needs of the American people.

John Pace lives in Honesdale, PA. He frequently contributes to the opinion pages.