when he $TRUMP meme The coin fell on Friday night, no one was surprised. Or at least they shouldn't have been. He has a knack for diving headfirst into projects he thinks he can make money from, promoting himself, which often end in disaster. Some of these companies include Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Magazine, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Mortgage, Trump: The Game. crypto is the next game in town that he decided to jump into.
I've already written articles and spoken at length about how Trump leaned into the crypto space to win votes in this past election which, in many ways, was quite successful. At bitcoin Nashville last summer, in an effort to drum up support for his presidential bid, Trump said some notable things, including that the United States will become “t<a target="_blank" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-hails-crypto-largest-bitcoin-conference-rcna163925″>The cryptocapital of the planet. and bitcoin superpower of the world”, which would fire Gary Gensler and who wants all the remaining bitcoins to be manufactured in the United States (from a decentralized point of view, and very implausible in reality). He also said he would commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht the first day, and if it does, I will be the first to give credit where credit is due. (For more information on this I recommend seeing the recent Reason Documentary on why Ross should be released).
Cryptocurrencies are Donald Trump's next frontier and combine several things he loves when it comes to business deals: fast, easy money, self-promotion, America-first messaging, and little bureaucratic friction to get in his way. So what is the $TRUMP coin?
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It is built on the Solana blockchain with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. Initially, 200 million tokens are available for circulation, while the remaining 800 million are held by CIC Digital, a subsidiary of the Trump Organization, subject to a three-year lock-up period (meaning the Trump family owns 80% of the supply…). Following its launch, the market capitalization of the $TRUMP coin increased, reaching approximately $6 billion. The price of the coin reached a high of $33.7. The $TRUMP coin was marketed as a means for his supporters to express their alignment with Trump's ideals, rather than as an investment opportunity, which is nonsense for the pump-and-dump self-enrichment plan that I believe , he is immoral and unethical for creating. and the investors (oops, I guess we should say “fans”) are stupid for participating.
With the inauguration on Monday, we are entering uncharted territory where Trump is likely to issue Executive Orders related to bitcoin and crypto, and now emboldened by the presidency, lack of legal concerns and partisans who I truly believe would be fine with any thing to do. . As he said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?”
Some of these actions could be positive for the bitcoin industry and its advocates in the United States. But many of his actions could also equally benefit the broader crypto space, which is rife with fraudulent pump-and-dump coins and useless get-rich-quick schemes for insiders and people who have pressured him during this last cycle. The pump-and-dump cryptocurrency landscape, its ridiculous coins and nfts, make sense to Trump. In fact, I bet he actually believes this is the purpose of cryptocurrencies, even though he knows little about bitcoin. Trump has repeatedly said that he has “<a target="_blank" href="https://www.theblock.co/post/281660/donald-trump-fun-crypto–bitcoin“>fun with crypto” and finished his keynote speech at the bitcoin Conference last summer saying “have fun with your bitcoin and your crypto and whatever else you're playing with.” Trump's experience and views on cryptocurrencies and bitcoin revolve around having fun and making easy money. But with bitcoin, many of us in the space are fighting for much more, including the many use cases for bitcoin as a censorship-resistant digital currency, digital gold, a medium of exchange for use in self-custody and through security tools. preservation of privacy, a powerful tool for human rights, and much more. This is not a gamble for us… it is the future of money that challenges the rule of the dollar and the central bank.
If Trump really started to understand this, based on his history and previous statements about bitcoin, he would be quite against this use of bitcoin. Or maybe you know what bitcoin is on some level and prefer to promote “fun” meme coins, and maybe bitcoin as digital gold, but nothing more. He did it after all say in 2021clearly: “bitcoin, it just seems like a scam. I don't like it because it's another currency that competes against the dollar.” He added that he wanted the dollar to be “the currency of the world.” (For more information on this concept, I recommend following <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/markgoodw_in”>Mark Goodwin and his work on the bitcoin dollar).
Trump wants you to keep playing with cryptocurrencies, funneling money to his organizations, but he's unlikely to be a fan of anyone using bitcoin as a competitor to the dollar, bypassing traditional finance, or using privacy tools (particularly if you're an adversary or otherwise which he considers a left/woke cause, which perhaps one day he would classify our nonprofit The progressive Bitcoiner as). I will continue to promote bitcoin as resistance money and I hope you will join me, instead of endlessly betting on cryptocurrencies “and everything else you are playing with.”
This is a guest post by Trey Walsh. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of btc Inc or bitcoin Magazine.
