Memecoins Off Limits, $1.4B Crypto Paydays Not: Gillibrand Tries to Outlaw Lawmakers Launching Tokens 🚫🪙

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is pushing to bar elected officials and the president from issuing or sponsoring their own digital assets, citing President Donald Trump's and First Lady Melania Trump's memecoins and Trump's roughly $1.4 billion in 2025 crypto income. In a Friday notice, the New York Democrat said Congress should support measures preventing public officials and their spouses from "issuing or sponsoring their own digital assets," including any US president and their spouse. The proposal did not specifically extend to the office of the vice president or to other family members. "This is a commonsense requirement that should get broad bipartisan support – public officials and their spouses should not be issuing memecoins," Gillibrand said. "We cannot let self-dealing destroy an opportunity to strengthen consumer protections, crack down on illicit finance, and expand economic opportunity for the millions of Americans our financial system has left behind."

Trump's 927-page financial disclosure, released Tuesday by the Office of Government Ethics, reported more than $1.4 billion in crypto income for 2025, including about $636 million from CIC Digital LLC linked to the Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin license. Melania Trump reported $6 million from NFTs and digital collectibles associated with her memecoin. Trump has said there was "nothing illegal" and "nothing wrong" with profiting from his investments as president. The TRUMP token was trading near $1.80, down more than 97% from its $73.43 peak set days after its January 2025 launch.

Gillibrand co-sponsors the End Crypto Corruption Act, introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley in May 2025, which would bar presidents, lawmakers, senior officials, and their families from issuing or endorsing digital assets, including memecoins and stablecoins. She is also one of the lawmakers negotiating the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act in the Senate, a market-structure bill that has faced delays over ethics, tokenization, and stablecoin rewards. During 2025 consideration of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act), senators removed provisions specifically targeting Trump's crypto ties, and Gillibrand said at the time that the Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin was likely "illegal based on current law." Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law in July 2025.

In an interview with Bloomberg at the Solana Accelerate conference in Miami, Gillibrand said she is hopeful the CLARITY Act can proceed through the Senate Banking Committee within two weeks, adding that Democrats are demanding ethics provisions, stablecoin-yield rules, and illicit-finance safeguards before providing further support. She has said she does not expect a vote before the Senate's August state work period and has warned that no member will back the bill without addressing ethics, citing the potential of elected officials "[getting] rich off of these industries because of their insider status." She also told Bloomberg that conflict-of-interest rules are "even more critical now that Trump has made his latest financial disclosure."

Gillibrand's ethics push comes as her own family draws scrutiny. Fortune reported in June that her son, 22-year-old Theodore Gillibrand, raised $30 million led by Lux Capital at a $300 million valuation to launch American Perpetuals Exchange Corp, a startup planning to seek approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to list perpetual futures on stocks and indexes. Gillibrand, a longtime advocate of banning stock trading by lawmakers, says her son runs the business independently without her involvement. Separately, Trump has faced criticism over his sons' roles in the crypto platform World Liberty Financial and their Bitcoin (BTC) mining company American Bitcoin, though Gillibrand's proposed restriction did not appear to extend to those family members.