Donald Trump, the former US president who has embraced bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in recent months and launched a radical plan to pay off the US’s $35 trillion debt, could shake up the banking world if he takes over the White House this year.
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Trump, who made a high-profile appearance at the Bitcoin 2024 conference last month alongside a bitcoin bill that is “absolutely game-changing,” has fueled wild speculation about a bitcoin price boom.
As the cryptocurrency market braces for a Wall Street earthquake, Trump’s son Don Jr. has launched a Telegram channel for Trump’s decentralized finance (DeFi) project that his brother Eric says will “shake up” the world of banking and finance.
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The Telegram channel will give people the lowdown on the Trump family’s upcoming DeFi cryptocurrency project amid rampant “rumors” and wild “speculation” about it, according to Don Jr., who called on people to join in to “get the real story.”
“There are a lot of rumors going around about our cryptocurrency project,” Don Jr. posted on X. “To get the real story and stay up to date with official announcements, join our official Telegram channel. Don’t rely on speculation, get the news directly here!”
The channel, which has less than 20,000 subscribers this morning, posted only one message: “Welcome to The DeFiant Ones, the only official Telegram channel for the Trump DeFi project! We are excited to have you as part of our growing community. Please know that this is the only official channel for our project. Stay vigilant and don’t fall for impersonation or scams: our team will never send you a private message first. Let’s build the future of finance together. Be DeFiant!”
The Defiant Ones is also trademarked by a company called AMG Software Solutions, which has also filed trademark applications for the terms “Be DeFiant,” “World Liberty,” and “World Liberty Financial,” it was reported by The Block.
As details of Trump’s crypto project emerge, it seems likely that it will be presented as an alternative to a bank account, with Trump brothers Eric and Don Jr. last week denying speculation about a memecoin.
“It’s digital real estate,” Eric told The New York Post This week, referring to cryptocurrencies, he said: “It’s fair. It’s a guarantee that everyone can access instantly. I don’t know if people realize what a disruption this is to the banking and financial world. I hope we can help change that.”
The banking and financial sector has become politicized in recent years, particularly due to trucker protests in Canada against mandatory Covid vaccinations, which led Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to freeze the protesters’ bank accounts. Meanwhile, British politician Nigel Farage has claimed that his bank account was closed in part because his political views were deemed “at odds” with the bank.
“More than half the country right now doesn’t have a bank account,” Eric Trump told the American television network. Job“That means they’ll be denied most loans from most institutions. But with this technology, they could have the ability to be approved or denied almost instantly by a lender based on math, not policy. Money could be in their account in minutes, not months.”
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Rumors of an official Trump currency began circulating last week after a series of X-rated posts from Eric and Don Jr., who teased a “big” crypto announcement but later dismissed speculation of a Trump currency and said their plans were for a crypto platform.
“I think what we want to do is kind of take on a lot of the banking world,” Don Jr. said during a live Q&A on subscription platform Locals last week. “This notion of decentralized finance is obviously very appealing to people like me who have been disaffiliated from their banks or haven’t been able to get insurance or whatever.”
Last month, Trump, who turned to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies after making millions from a series of digital trading cards based on the cryptocurrency, promised to create a “strategic national reserve of bitcoin” and predicted that bitcoin could eclipse gold’s $16 trillion market cap during a keynote speech at the Bitcoin conference.
Bitcoin
“If elected, it will be the policy of my administration, the United States of America, to retain 100 percent of all bitcoin that the United States government currently owns or acquires. We will retain 100 percent of it going forward,” Trump said in his speech. “That will, in effect, serve as the basis for the strategic national stockpile of bitcoin.”