Trump's meme coin: Presidential influence monetization, political corruption on blockchain

This post was inspired by a few weeks ago by Demetri Kofinas on Grant Williams’s excellent podcast , who held a negative view of the political memecoins , and the recent engaging and somewhat positive article about political meme coins by Arthur Hayes , Zero Knowledge Proof .

We first elaborate on Dmitry's point of view, the shamelessness and absurdity of Trump's meme coins.

This is totally crazy. You are the President of the United States! Once the glorious position in the world, working in the Oval Office is an incredible privilege, an opportunity to bring change. You are in your seventies, and this is an opportunity to influence the world, leave legacy, and change people 's lives. And you are launching a meme coin!

The launch of Trump’s meme coin is particularly disturbing, as Trump was elected as a platform related to the national revival. So, when he took office, the first thing he did on his inauguration day was to launch a meme coin. This was simply a heavy punch to the stomach.

Meme coins, at least to some, are the dirtiest, useless, and stupidest part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which itself has become infamous for fraud, and that reputation is not unfounded. Meme coins are extreme examples of financial absurdity, speculative bubbles, and greed. Perhaps it is understandable that teenagers are interested in this kind of thing, or it is not surprising that some disgraced Nazi rapper dabbled in Meme Coin. However, the US President! How did we get to this point? How can the president escape all this politically and legally unscathed?

Trump is not just a lunatic, or an unexpected or random event that falls from the sky. Trump is the result of decades of bad policies and naked corruption among our political leaders. As Dmitry said, when people question $TRUMP, there are always people who say:

" Look at Biden, look at Hunter Biden. He's on the board of Burisma. What does he know? Biden lets him in."

Grant Williams seems to agree with this, mentioning the 2002 lies about the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) as other factors that led to The public's massive loss of trust in the political system, which makes $TRUMP possible.

Therefore, when the fact that the weapon of mass destruction was not found and the fact that the entire invasion was completely unnecessary really surfaced, there might be enough senior officials and powerful people to blame, and this matter was covered up in a hurry. Nothing was done, and no one was punished. Yes, we investigated, but that was just a cover-up. So people feel angry because they feel... no matter how you think of humans,

Not bearish, but cynical

Grant continued to discuss how this loss of trust led to the loss of moral values. In his opinion, everything is about making money in greed and speculative bubbles. Rather than saying that he is bearish about these bubble markets, he develops a wider cynicism about Western values.

" It's interesting, about the idea of ​​being bearish when the market is rising, back to 2008, and the question of what happened afterwards and lack of consequences. I think this 'bearish' idea is now becoming for me personally It's clearer. And it's not about the market's bearishness. It's about the society's bearishness. It's about what happens when we reach the kind of moral vacuum you're talking about. The idea is, if' The number rises' becomes the only thing that will lead to OnlyFans, and all these terrible women showing off on the internet how many men they can sleep with in a day, and being proud of it, all of these things for attention. You see again Looking at those so-called 'Internet celebrities', this is a completely moral vacuum."

" I think I'm really starting to understand what my own 'bearish' is now, because I'm not without investment over the years, and I'm not sitting on a pile of gold and canned food waiting for the end of the world. Come on me Say, it's an attempt to discuss something other than what will rise tomorrow. And that's important to me. Because there are already enough places to talk about 'number rise', but not so many places to Let you hear people like you have meaningful conversations and discuss meaningful topics instead of 'so to sum up, here is a three-letter abbreviation that you need to buy to make money from this conversation' as the end .”

Dmitry then agreed with Grant and also expressed negative views on cryptocurrencies.

I 'm not trying to over-criticize cryptocurrencies, but...

In the cryptocurrency industry, it is really touching to experience this unique experience. All the smart people I know, as long as they make money in this industry, know that this is almost all scams, almost all pyramid scams, almost all driven by the pyramid model. If you stayed in the cryptocurrency circle long enough, you will remember that you once really believed that most of these things would make a difference. Maybe they will indeed be useful in the end – just put in enough money and get enough government regulatory support. Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) can indeed achieve certain applications in the financial field. But in my opinion, the amount of capital and wealth generated so far is not enough to justify it. I am worried, and have been publicly expressing this concern, and I am worried about what this means for our economic success in the long run. If we put all our efforts and capital into an economic field that can only produce limited returns, what exactly are we doing? The Chinese didn 't do this.

All politicians should have meme coins

Maelstrom's chief investment officer Arthur Hayes has a more positive view on $TRUMP. In his recent article, he explains how meme coins can bring us into a new era of politics—an era that is more competitive and dynamic. In this era, budding political leaders can raise funds for campaigns by issuing meme coins, both entering public office and becoming rich at the same time. The price of the meme coins will reflect the political fate of the relevant politicians.

Like Dmitry and Grant, Arthur also mentioned Hunter Biden's corruption problem, but explained that meme coins actually improved the situation, allowing politicians to get from public office in a more transparent way. Make a profit.

" It's much better than the Biden family collecting secret remunerations from a series of foreign businesses to various super secret corporate entities to fill their pockets. Of course, if the person who passed the cash was not an addict, these should have been It's super secret."

Arthur's point of view is certainly correct in technology. Transparency is a good thing, so transparent grassroots corruption is better than secret top-down corruption from large enterprises or Ukrainian gas companies. But with the emergence of meme coins, "the veil has been unveiled." Under Biden's corruption, there may be people in half of the countries who can pretend that everything is reasonable. And now, everyone knows that the system is corrupt and everyone knows that others know. This could lead to more turbulent political situations. This is undoubtedly a bad thing! No matter how obvious you think a "judge" in the United States knows nothing about the Eastern European energy industry, some people just can't see it. Whether Twitter blocks private news about the topic or simply ignores it on purpose, some people can pretend that the government is serving the people. And now, everyone knows it, and everyone knows it, and everyone knows it. To some extent, the rules of the game have changed.

Trump allocated 80% of Trump's currency to himself, a point seen by critics as a symbol of corruption. However, as Arthur mentioned, for other politicians, this problem is possible.

" The easiest way is to distribute 100% of the tokens at issue. Then, if politicians want to believe in themselves, they can enter the market at the same price as everyone else."

Conservative view on the price of meme coins

As for whether the price of a political meme coins should reflect a politician's career or popularity, Arthur's point is simple:

" People buy $TRUMP because they want to be part of the Trump supporter community, or they believe Trump will be more popular in the future. That's all. There's nothing complicated about economic or financial theories to understand here. You don't You need to understand algebra, basic calculus, statistics or probability theory. You just need to think and feel like a passionate human. Therefore, anyone can understand what gives the value of the political meme coins."

We tend to take an old-school, boring, traditionalist, value investor-type perspective, which may be closer to Grant and Dmitry’s position. Why should the price of meme coins follow the popularity of a certain politician? Isn't this just a stupid speculation game? Prices will definitely deviate from political reality.

" I don't have meme coins"

Rest assured, we don’t think a dystopian political future is likely to emerge. In such a future, every politician needs to have a meme coin to have a chance to win the election. A new generation of politicians can rise up and use "no meme coins" as a unique selling point. Such politicians can claim that they can run for the right reasons, not to get rich, but to help the people.

Trump and his supporters hype DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). Today, criticizing DEI has become the easiest path and the most obvious entry point to get support. But is DEI really common to the point where it causes lasting damage to economic productivity? We don't think so. Perhaps a bigger economic problem is that people dream of getting rich quickly through speculative financial instruments such as meme coins. Why do you still have to work hard from 9 to 5, but you can make a fortune by speculating at home and mismatch capital to political finance (PoliFi) in a place of success?

Trump 's economic rejuvenation plan

In addition to launching meme coins, Trump also plans to launch a series of exchange-traded funds ( ETFs ), including two Bitcoin-related ETFs:

1. Truth.Fi Bitcoin Plus ETF
2. Truth.Fi Bitcoin Plus SMA

This is another obvious opportunity for corruption. What will Trump discuss next time he meets Chief Mohamed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi? Trump may ask him to redeem his $437 million investment in BlackRock $IBIT in favor of Trump's Bitcoin ETF. This is the so-called art of trading.

As for whether the optimism Trump has successfully inspired and the strategies formulated by making corruption more open and transparent, time will really “make America great again”. However, call us cynics, we think Trump’s meme coins or other cryptocurrency-related programs may be a barrier, not a boost.