The Trump brothers have been teasing a mysterious cryptocurrency project, and now they’ve finally revealed it. Well, sort of. In fact, we still don’t know exactly what it is, even though we now know its name.
On Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. announced “The DeFiant Ones,” a new “crypto platform” that will help people make… uh, well, that part isn’t entirely clear yet. On X, Don Jr. linked to a Telegram page, where updates on “The DeFiant Ones” will be shared in the near future. From everything we’ve heard so far, the platform vaguely resembles a cryptocurrency exchange. But that’s just speculation. There’s little information on what the Trump boys actually do. All we have is the project’s hashtag: #bedefiant. Really cool, guys.
In a previous interview with the New York Post, Eric Trump described crypto as “digital real estate” and claimed that decentralized finance could help low-income Americans access the financial sector: “In fact, over half of this country right now doesn’t have a bank account,” he said. “That means most loans from most financial institutions are going to be denied. But with this technology, they could have the ability to be approved or denied almost instantly by a lender based on mathematical criteria, not political ones. The money could be in their account in minutes, not months.”
The Block previously noted that in July, trademark applications were filed for the slogan “Be DeFiant,” as well as “World Liberty” and “World Liberty Financial.” Those applications were filed by a company called AMG Software Solutions. One of the trademarks filed, World Liberty Financial, allegedly involves “the provision of financial information in the field of decentralized finance (DeFi).”
Trump, who despite his campaign’s growing alliance with the cryptocurrency industry has so far demonstrated a limited understanding of what decentralized finance actually is, helped his sons promote the project Thursday, briefly posting about it on Truth Social. “For too long, the average American has been squeezed by big banks and financial elites,” said Trump, a financial elite who has helped big banks and other elites squeeze the average American. “It’s time for us to take a stand, together,” he added, sharing a link to his sons’ crypto project.
It’s unclear how a decentralized finance project will help average Americans avoid being “squeezed” economically. My guess is that it won’t, and that in the worst case scenario, the project will collapse once its political utility has diminished.
“Over the next few days, we’ll be sharing important updates and announcements right here in this channel,” Don Jr. said in a message on Telegram. Okay, great. Let me know when those updates include a full description of your platform.