Trump’s $9 billion crypto coin is a windfall—and a new forum for influence buying, ethics expert warns.

Before taking office, Jimmy Carter famously put his family-owned peanut business into a blind trust to ensure he would not have any conflicts of interest while serving as U.S. president. His successors followed suit, from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama, before Donald Trump’s vast business network raised alarm bells during his first term. Now, Trump’s decision to launch a crypto memecoin three days before his inauguration is “on a level that I think no one imagined before,” said Jordan Libowitz, a vice president at the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

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