Former President Donald Trump on Thursday touted his family’s upcoming cryptocurrency project, a platform called “The DeFiant Ones.”
The name is a play on words with the shorthand term used in the crypto world for decentralized finance.
“For too long, the average American has been held hostage by big banks and financial elites,” Trump wrote. “It’s time we take a stand – together. #BeDefiant.”
The article provides no further information about what The DeFiant Ones would actually do for its users, or what it actually is. While it seems likely that it is a crypto-cooperative, a blockchain organizational structure otherwise known as a decentralized autonomous organization, it could just as easily be a currency, a marketplace, or even a blog of some sort.
What is the post did The included link took the user to a Telegram channel that had about 36,000 subscribers as of Thursday evening. The channel, which was created on August 6, contains a handful of messages teasing “the Trump DeFi project” and using the characteristic optimistic but empty language typically deployed by crypto aficionados.
“Here we go!!!!,” the channel posted without further details last Sunday, its most recent message dating from Thursday.
Trump’s endorsement follows weeks of hype from Eric and Don Jr. “Stay tuned for a big announcement…” Eric tweeted the same day the Telegram channel was created, claiming he had “really fallen in love with Crypto/DeFi.” (Sorry, Lara.)
Eric gave an interview to the The New York Post The following week, he expanded on his love of crypto, touting it as the hallmark of “a world where we don’t have to play by big banking rules.”
He suggested the brothers’ plan could target financially insecure Americans, seemingly leveling the playing field by acting as a form of collateral.
“More than half of Americans are currently unbanked,” Eric said. “That means they’re going to 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 politics. Money could be in their account in minutes, not months.”
Tech blog The Verge noted after Trump’s announcement that cryptocurrencies, a high-risk and volatile asset, could help unbanked and underserved communities gain easier access to financial services. In 2022, the Center for American Progress, a liberal economic policy institute, published a paper pointing out that claims that cryptocurrencies increased financial inclusion were “dubious” at best.
“There is no systematic evidence that cryptocurrency transactions are cheaper than traditional financial transactions, and crypto assets are still primarily used for speculation rather than payment,” the article reads. “The fundamental goal of financial inclusion is to improve the overall economic well-being of low-income people, and encouraging people to use their hard-earned wages or savings to buy high-risk assets could have the opposite effect.”
After years of warily eyeing cryptocurrencies, Trump has recently changed course. As part of his presidential campaign, he appeared as the keynote speaker at this year’s Bitcoin conference, and is openly being lobbied by cryptocurrency industry executives.
