When the $TRUMP meme coin dropped Friday night, no one was surprised. Or at least, they shouldn’t have been. He has a knack for diving headfirst into ventures he thinks he can make money on, in a self-promotional way, which often end in disaster. Some of these ventures 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’s decided to dive into.
I have already written articles and talked at length about the fact that Trump turned to the cryptocurrency sector to gain votes in the last elections which in many ways were quite successful. At Bitcoin Nashville last summer, in an effort to drum up support for his presidential bid, Trump said a few notable things, including that America will become “the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world,” which he would fired Gary Gensler, and that he wants all remaining bitcoins to be produced in America (worrying from a decentralized point of view and highly implausible in reality). He also famously said he would commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence on day one, and if he does I’ll be the first to give credit where credit is due. (To learn more, I recommend watching Reason’s recent documentary on why Ross should be freed.)
Cryptocurrencies are Donald Trump’s next frontier, and they combine several things he absolutely loves when it comes to business: quick and easy money, self-promotion, American messaging, and little bureaucratic friction in his way. So, what is the $TRUMP coin?
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, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, subject to a three-year lock-up period (meaning the Trump family holds the ‘80% of the offer…). After its launch, the market capitalization of the $TRUMP coin increased, reaching approximately $6 billion. The coin’s price peaked at $33.7. The $TRUMP coin was marketed as a means for 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 scheme ” which in my opinion is unethical and unethical for having created, and the investors (oops, maybe we should say “fans”) are stupid for taking part in it.
With Monday’s inauguration, we are entering uncharted territory where Trump is likely to issue executive orders related to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and now emboldened by the presidency, a lack of legal concerns, and supporters who I truly believe would be fine no matter what he does . As he famously quoted: “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 supporters in the United States. But many of his actions could also benefit the broader crypto space that is full of pump-and-dump scam coins and pointless get-rich-quick schemes for wealthy insiders and people who pressured him during this latest cycle . The pump and dump cryptocurrency landscape, its dumb coins and NFTs, make sense to Trump. In fact, I bet he truly believes this is the purpose of cryptocurrencies, despite knowing little about Bitcoin. Trump has repeatedly said to “have fun with cryptocurrencies” and concluded his speech at the Bitcoin Conference last summer by saying “have fun with your bitcoins, your cryptocurrencies and everything you’re playing with.” Trump’s experience and opinions on cryptocurrencies and bitcoin are about having fun and making easy money. But with Bitcoin, many of us in the industry are striving for so much more, which includes Bitcoin’s many use cases as a censorship-resistant digital currency, digital gold, a medium of exchange for use in self-custody and through privacy protection, a powerful tool for human rights and much more. This is not a gamble for us… it is the future of money challenging the dollar and central bank dominance.
If Trump really began to understand this, based on his history and previous statements about Bitcoin, he would be completely against this use of Bitcoin. Or maybe he knows what Bitcoin is on some level and would rather promote “funny” meme coins, and maybe Bitcoin as digital gold, but nothing more. After all, in 2021 he clearly said: “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 on this concept I highly recommend following 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 a opponent or from what he considers a left/woke cause, which perhaps would one day classify our non-profit organization The Progressive Bitcoiner). I will continue to promote Bitcoin as a currency of resistance and hope you will join me, instead of betting endlessly on cryptocurrencies “and everything else you’re playing with.”
This is a guest post by Trey Walsh. The opinions expressed are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.