A multi‑speaker discussion about Donald Trump’s influence on the cryptocurrency market, focused especially on the ‘Trump token’ meme coin, its market effects (liquidity shifts and a ‘vampire attack’ on other meme tokens), and political/regulatory consequences including crypto lobbying’s role in recent elections and pressure on lawmakers.
With Donald Trump, you get everything. And so if you don't like the Trump meme coin, that's part of the whole package of him being pro crypto.
The Trump token was a hugely successful vampire attack on meme tokens.
I'm probably the oldest person that I know in bitcoin anyway.
Trump getting legacy for you. If you give your money away, you will be loved.
There's a 0.0% chance that's gonna happen, and this is why I'm probably gonna get deported from the United States. With Donald Trump, you get everything, so you get the things that you don't like. And so if you don't like the Trump meme coin, that's part of the whole package of him being pro crypto, and that's just how he's going to operate for him and his family.
So.
But what I. What I don't like about it, frankly, is the pressure that it puts on the older politicians in our society where they'll look and say, well, wait a minute, he's running the free world 48 hours before he accepted the oath of office for a very sacred position in the United States. He's grifting on the society. And so that will put pressure on regulators and lawmakers to potentially slow things down for the crypto industry. So hopefully I'm wrong. I'd like to be wrong on that. And, you know, we had other speakers that said that it was not going to be an issue for the bitcoin strategic reserve. And there are people in the Senate that want the bitcoin strategic reserve. So I do think it will happen. The question is, how much is that delayed? I don't know, obviously, yet you're involved.
In the Wave three space?
Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think, to me, the negatives on this one. And actually Anthony just was at an event before, he just asked people, sort of from industry insiders, raise of hands.
Right.
And to your thing. And. And basically 90% of the audience was agreeing that this wasn't actually broadly a good thing, which makes me a little bit sort of short term, a little more negative on the sentiment, but maybe not just because of the politicians per se, because they were kind of not that friendly for crypto for the last four years anyway, for the most part. But it was also the fact that our industry has actually got a lot of liquidity sucked out from really good projects that actually building utility and products and services, basically putting all that attention on the token, that really kind of just sort of promoted all the things that everyone was concerned around. On one hand, but I also think it signals a little bit of our sort of peak meme season, as it were. Because actually, really, if you think about it, the Trump token was a hugely successful vampire attack on meme tokens. And that's actually similar to when you think of kind of what EOS did with ethereum back in 2017, ICO. It was that kind of a style attack. But the difference is that the exit liquidity wasn't fiat, which is what happened basically in 2017 and 2018. It was actually bitcoin. So while everyone was sort of moving out of sort of Trump token, actually bitcoin actually went up. And so there's a whole cycling going on, which kind of is a positive as a signaling, but it's still a negative, I think, in the sense that it's taken away some of the seriousness of this. So my message to the Trump team that did the tokens ideally is put it out for charity. Right. And if actually, if there's one thing that Trump is, you know, I guess a lot of people would say that he's narcissistic. I don't know if that's true or not. But the point being, that's true. Okay, fine. All right.
But the point is, he's such a nice guy, but he's very narcissistic. We'll keep going.
The point is that if he wants to have a lasting legacy to be remembered, one thing that narcissists want is love from everyone, is if he actually puts out that money and gives it to people for good causes, he will go down in history as the most charitable president in the world. And that, to me, that's what I'm hoping.
There's a 0.0% chance that's going to happen.
I know, but this is why he.
Is so successful, and this is why I'm probably going to get deported from the United States.
But I mean, this is an opportunity. Those things you have to.
There is why I'm living in Switzerland.
Anyway, Trump get legacy for you. If you give your money away, you will be loved.
Obviously, crypto lobbying last year had a very important role in the outcome of the election. We're exploring this in a documentary. You spoke at length about that tipping the scales in one very important Senate race. In your mind, do you think that crypto lobbying last year took the scales in the bma?
And it was actually, I do believe that. And I think, Brian, in conversations inside there, the notion was that there were no anti crypto voters. So if a politician said, I'm anti crypto. There wasn't a whole group of people that said, okay, I'm voting for you, but if you were pro crypto, there was a group of people voting for you. And I think. I think the Democrats really didn't understand that. They missed that. They didn't really provide an explanation about why they were anti crypto. John Deaton, who's a friend of mine, ran against Elizabeth Warren. There's a great scene in one of their debates where they're talking about crypto and they're asking her, well, why are you so anti crypto? She couldn't explain it. No, she really honestly couldn't explain it. And so I think it's not lost on all of these people now that they've got to get on the bandwagon and they have to provide regulatory clarity or they're going to continue to lose elections.
I think there's a lesson also which is true for most politics, which is that people don't vote against something, they vote for something, irrespective. Right, very true. So if there was actually a messaging around why you shouldn't vote for crypto, what was the reason for that? That would be the campaign platform. Not just simply, we don't like it for whatever reasons. Right. And I think it just became too ideological, but it also has an impact on the rest of the world. Now that America has adopted crypto, I think the rest of the world, those who are unsure about the regulation, are going to say, okay, how do I trade if I receive stablecoin? And I can't accept it because my bank won't allow it because I don't have KFC AML regulations in the structure. I can't do business with America. So I actually think what's going to happen is that over the course of the Trump administration, there's going to be a lot of countries that have to catch up just so they can do business with the U.S. but I can actually think wire transfers are going to be more and more a thing of the past. People going to send stables across. You know, yes, there's yield bearing as well, but also the fact that it's faster, better. So I think a lot of that is actually going to develop much faster as a result of that. It.
