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 jumping headfirst into endeavors he thinks he can make money from in a self-promoting way that often ends 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 he has decided to throw his hat into.
I’ve already written articles and spoken at varying lengths about Trump leaning into the crypto space to earn 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 America will become the “crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world,” that he would fire Gary Gensler, and that he wants that all remaining bitcoin must be made in America (from a decentralized point of view and highly unlikely in reality). He also famously said he would reverse Ross Ulbricht’s sentence on day one, which if he does, I’ll be the first to give credit where credit is due. (For more on this, I recommend watching the recent Reason documentary on why Ross should be freed).
Crypto is Donald Trump’s next frontier and combines several things he absolutely loves when it comes to business deals – Fast easy money, self promotion, America first messaging and a little bureaucratic friction standing in his way. So what is $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, a Trump Organization affiliate, subject to a three-year lock-up period (meaning the Trump family has 80% of the supply…). After its launch, the $TRUMP coin’s market capitalization increased and reached around $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 a sham of the pump and dump self-enrichment scheme that I believe he is immoral and unethical to create, and investors (oops, think we should say “fans”) are stupid to take part in.
With the inauguration on Monday, we are entering uncharted territory where Trump is likely to issue executive orders regarding bitcoin and crypto, and now emboldened by the presidency, lack of legal concerns, and supporters who I really think would be fine with what whatever he does. . As he famously quoted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”
Some of these actions could be positive for the Bitcoin industry and advocates in the United States. But many of his actions could also equally benefit the wider crypto space, which is filled with pump-and-dump scam coins and useless get-rich-quick schemes for wealthy insiders and people who have lobbied him through this last cycle. Pump and dump the crypto landscape, his silly coins and NFTs make sense for Trump. In fact, I bet he really believes this is the purpose of crypto while knowing little about Bitcoin. Trump has repeatedly said he’s “having fun with crypto” and ended his keynote speech at the Bitcoin conference last summer by saying “have fun with your bitcoin and your crypto and everything else you’re playing with.” Trump’s experience and views on crypto and bitcoin are about fun and making easy money. But with Bitcoin, many of us in the space are fighting for much more, which includes Bitcoin’s many use-cases as censorship-resistant digital currency, digital gold, a medium of exchange for use in self-storage and via privacy protection tools, a powerful tool for human rights, and much more more. This is not a gamble for us…this is the money of the future challenging the dollar and central bank rule.
If Trump really started to understand this, based on his track record and previous statements about Bitcoin, he would be right against this use of Bitcoin. Or maybe he knows what Bitcoin is on some level and would rather promote the “funny” meme coins, and maybe Bitcoin as digital gold, but nothing more. After all, he said in 2021, clearly, “Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam. I don’t like it because it’s another currency that competes with 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 crypto, sending money to his organizations, but it is unlikely that he would be a fan of someone who uses bitcoin as a competitor to the dollar, bypasses traditional finance or uses tools for protection of personal information (especially if you are an opponent or from what he considers to be a left/vigilante cause, which he might one day classify our nonprofit The Progressive Bitcoiner as). I will continue to promote Bitcoin as the currency of resistance and hope you will join me instead of endlessly playing crypto “and everything else you play with.”
This is a guest post by Trey Walsh. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.