THE SEC SAID MEMECOINS ARE NOT SECURITIES SIX WEEKS AFTER $TRUMP LAUNCHED — THE STATEMENT’S OWN FINE PRINT SAYS IT HAS “NO LEGAL FORCE OR EFFECT”

Donald Trump's memecoin went live on January 17, 2025, three days before he was sworn in. Six weeks later, on February 27, the staff of his own SEC published a statement saying memecoin trades “do not involve the offer and sale of securities under the federal securities laws.”

Read the fine print in the same document. It says the statement “has no legal force or effect.” It says the Commission “has neither approved nor disapproved its content.” And it says it does not cover coins called memecoins “in an effort to evade the application of the federal securities laws.” That is not a clearance. That is staff opinion with three trapdoors built into it.

The money sits on the record separately. Chainalysis traced more than $324 million in trading fees to wallets that received their coins from the creators without paying for them, through early May 2025. Trump's own ethics filing for 2025, received by the Office of Government Ethics on June 29, 2026, reports about $635 million in royalties under a line called Celebration Coins.

On August 3, 2026, two senators had to write to the SEC chairman asking him to investigate. Warren and Blumenthal have their own reasons to want that headline. It does not change what the letter proves. You do not ask for an investigation that is already running. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $84,345.