“I made a fortune with Trump’s memecoin, but I lost it all the following month,” a user on X admits. “It’s a perfect Ponzi scheme,” says another. “It’s a scam, a fraud.” On other social platforms there are thousands of comments like these, ranging from investors asking “What did you expect?” to others who watched their savings vanish after chasing the promise of quick gains.

Donald Trump returned to the White House promising to usher in a new era for crypto. He stoked the enthusiasm of thousands who gambled on a market legitimized by the president himself. But the outcome has not matched expectations. Not only has he broken many of his promises, he has exposed a contradiction in his own populist rhetoric: while…