A little over a year ago, I stood in a gilded ballroom in Washington, DC, during inauguration weekend, surrounded by the blockchain industry’s top executives and investors. They had swapped their hoodies for tuxedos and dresses, celebrating the rise of the first “crypto president,” Donald Trump, who embraced the once-renegade sector on the campaign trail. But in the middle of the night, rumors began spreading through the crowd that Trump, who was not in attendance, had launched his own memecoin. Toward the end of a Snoop Dogg DJ set, the Trump coin had surpassed $1 billion.
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Some of the more astute members of the audience immediately clocked what was happening. Trump, who made a career brandishing everything from casinos to steakhouses to unaccredited colleges, was doing the same with crypto. Would Trump’s latest business venture go the way of Trump Tower or Trump University?
As we quickly discovered, the quality of the Trump family’s crypto efforts was almost a red herring (even though we’ve covered it closely, including in my colleague Ben Weiss’s terrific new feature on US Bitcoin). Instead, ethics watchdogs argued that Trump used his blockchain activities as a way to sell access. But unlike concerns during his first term that foreign dignitaries could book rooms at Trump hotels, which taught the term “emoluments” to millions of Americans, now anyone with an internet connection could actually transfer millions of dollars to Trump by creating a digital wallet and reap the rewards. Its major memecoin holders enjoyed a private audience with the president last May, although not all of them were happy with the food they were served.
In hindsight, these ethical concerns also seem outdated. Saturday evening, the Wall Street Journal has released an explosive report that two lieutenants of a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family signed a contract to inject $500 million into World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto platform, in exchange for a 49% stake, just days before his inauguration. Like the Newspaper Put simply, this was something unprecedented in American politics: “A foreign government official taking a major stake in the company of a new American president.” » And a few months later, the Trump administration granted the UAE access to advanced US chips despite widespread security concerns (although a World Liberty spokesperson said Fortune that the deal had nothing to do with the administration’s actions on the chips).
As the shockwaves of the scandal reverberate, a tricky question lingers: Is Trump bad for blockchain? The industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the 2024 election, which culminated in the coronation of Trump, who championed digital asset regulation, held summits and appointed czars. But now the landmark clarity bill is stalled in the Senate as Democrats call for ethics provisions that would prohibit the president from profiting from crypto holdings, and this wave of opposition will only grow. And despite Trump’s encouragement, Bitcoin prices are near their lowest price in a year, and many retail traders are staying away.
