President-elect Trump launched his own cryptocurrency overnight and swiftly appeared to make more than $25 billion on paper for himself and his companies.
Why it matters: The stunning launch of $TRUMP caught the entire industry off-guard, and speaks to both his personal influence and the ascendancy of cryptocurrency in his administration.
It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have $25 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 24 hours previously.
Trump holds 80% of the supply. This is going to be the biggest rug pull of all time. Americans are literally getting shitcoin scammed by their own presidents holy shit what a timeline.
And these "coins" are actually tokens. Not only are they not backed by any real assets (venture capital, real estate, etc), the damn things don't even exist in reality!
Honestly, I won't forgive Biden for just smiling in response to Trump winning after not leaving 4 years sooner. Before anyone asks, I voted for Harris, so don't shove that narrative down my throat.
America will have a law about this probably by 2070, after many more generations of Americans lose money to those scams and the legislative finally has people who understand technology to write laws about this
To be fair the valuability of a coin is not that much related to its popularity, but to its difficulty of obtention through proof-of-work (of proof of stake)
The venture was co-ordinated by CIC Digital LLC - an affiliate of the Trump Organization - which has previously sold Trump-branded shoes and fragrances.
Meme coins are used to build popularity for a viral internet trend or movement, but they lack intrinsic value and are extremely volatile investments.
To be fair, "market cap" is also a bullshit metric for stocks. The market price only ever represents the price of the currently traded stocks. Just dump 20% of the stock of any large company on the market and see how well their "market cap" lasts.
Nothing is illegal for a POTUS. He cannot be charged with any crime while in office, running for office, considering to run for office, and/or dreaming of being in office.
It's easy to think that crypto is over. The NFT bubble is so deflated. We've seen big companies like FTX bomb the hell out. I mean, the signs are obvious now, aren't they? Crypto was, conclusively, proven to be the scam everyone said it would be and we don't need any more proof, right?
And then we hear Trump administration is really into this crypto nonsense.
Somehow.
Guess they didn't get the memo.
Brace yourself for 4 years of spectacular, glorious fail.
And if someone says stuff like "oh, Trump just got filthy rich off of the meme coin he launched yesterday", let's wait and see how the coin does at the end of his administration.
Bitcoin is sitting at 105,000 each. Businesses have bought in, banks have bought in. A whole country buys them like clockwork for their citizens future.
Its a damn ponzi scheme where the last to hold the bag is the loser. Yet it is so big now, so entrenched, I dare say it may be too big (to be allowed) to fail.
Insane. And the worst part is, nobody actually uses them. Not in any significant way. It's just let's get rich!
In my mind this is just another way for shady actors to give him money with less paper trail. Is that not possible? I admit I don't actually know how people are buying or selling this.
Honestly if that's what's happening it seems like an actual 'good' use case for crypto. Good as in clever/useful not good as in, well, good.
$25 billion, in paper. The value will be down to zero way before he manages to sell off even $1 billion from it. And thats a generous guess. Meme coins don't retain value.
Making ANY money this way is outrageous, but we sooner solve world peace and world hunger than Trump being able to sell this off for the current paper value.
Yeah I feel as though he won't get that amount of money either and making any money is also outrageous.
I feel like the biggest pressing issue here is that this is not meant to go to the moon and stay there. Instead I think the real motive is to make inflation. Look at it, it's not meant to gain that amount of value, it's meant to skew our perception of value. This way the current inflationary prices don't look out of place when, in reality, everything is over valued. I guess it is also meant to make some people more complacent to inflation by giving them hope of "there being a chance" even though it clearly details how screwed over most of them will end up in the end compared to the house/dealer. Gambling is and will always be a big problem that adds more pressure to an otherwise unhealthy economy.
I don't deny the possibility, but that sounds like a lot of foresight which I'm not ready to attribute to Trump or his team. Additionally I don't think they care about "the people". The voters served their purpose. They are meaningless to them now. They will continue to produce anger and outrage, and will extract as much money as possible while it's still possible.
I think it's a simple money grab. Just not a $25 billion one.
I just finished watching Chernobyl and comments like this are now going to remind me of the fact that the reactor could not have exploded because that's not how RBMK reactors work.
There's that, but then again if I would have had managed to exit before the crash (which apparently already somewhat happened) I would've been practically stealing money from some MAGAs. But probably only those MAGAs who least deserve to be stolen from. The actual demons know exactly when to exit and are only going to profit from this.
The left has been in denial in regards to crypto. It needs to embrace decentralised crypto currencies such as ETH asap or perish. After all the current world/system we live in is ran by capital and without leftists are powerless. Either that or rivers of blood and no guarantees.
Crypto is not capital. Crypto is a poker table, where each player can only cash out what somebody else brought to the table. Buying those coins is placing a bet, not making an investment. No value is created in or by the system.
If Trump wants to buy a hamberder with his 25 billion in monopoly money he needs to find a sucker to buy the monopoly money from him at the asking price. If that sucker want to buy a Banana with it, they need to find the next sucker. It's a pyramid game, and the farther you get from the top the more likely you'll end up the one without a next sucker below you.
The reason libertarians and similar nutjobs clamor for governments going into crypto is that those governments with their virtually bottomless pockets would then become the ultimate suckers. They'd be boosting the prices for all former holders of that coin, who could then cash out big by selling to the governments. Something they currently can't do in big volumes without tanking prices.
Hmmm that's interesting. I wish I knew more about the crimes of all the presidents. I feel like if they were talked about more it would really bring down some of the power that people want to give to that office. Instead they make them out to be like gods after they are dead long enough
100% this. 25 billions? That's quite some money but nothing regarding the sell out that will happen the next 4 years. The USA will be slaughtered on a global scale, strictly orchestrated by its own rules of unrestricted capitalism. The last feast before the climate wars.
Please someone explain how this is in any way legal. This is fucking absurd. The amount of hatred I have for every racist imbecile that supported this rapist fascist felon is too much for me to bear. The logical thing to do would be to just ignore everything because my mental well-being is more important, but this seems like some historic occurrence that should be stopped by any means necessary.
At this point, anything the billionaires want is legal. It is fucking absurd. The entirety of T****'s first term was insanity. This one will be catastrophic, and unfixable for generations. His supreme court, judges, corruption has made it inevitable.
I tried to logically deal with the firehose of lies and hatred, thought it was important and worth it. Not anymore. Not again. This country is too fucking dumb for me to care anymore, too easily manipulated. Not worth the pain. I did what I could, voted against it every time. "But the price of eggs!"
I'm just going to fuck off and try to enjoy myself while it burns. Someone wake me for the revolution, the oligarch bbq, or some legit riots at least.
Why should legality matter? What are laws? It's rules that the government put down for everyone to follow. And what happens if someone controls all aspects of the government?
Legality is meaningless in the face of fascism, because the fascist government will be making the laws. it's like asking why it wasn't illegal to do genocide in nazi Germany. Or asking why it wasn't enforced by law to hide jews from the nazis to protect them
Legality is not relevant. Legality is not morality or a foundation for ethics. Legality is just the will of the government, for better or for worse. It is not something that necessarily serves the people's beat interests
Repugnantcans The party of misanthropic fascist vermin cheated the system to stack the highest court in the land with loyalists who now nearly unconditionally support anything Trump says/wants. It's legal because they literally put in writing that any/everything he does is.
Crypto is legally a type of stock in the usa. So has long as trum doesn't do anything that would get him on the hook for stock or security fraud he is in the clear
Crypto market cap does not equate the equivalent in dollars. When you create a new cryptocoin you can freely adjust the coin's parameters such as the amount of available coins. So let's say you "print" 1000 coins and sell one at $50. You now have a market cap of $50000.
It's like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, with the notable distinction that the rabbit isn't real. What makes it real is if enough suckers actually buy the coins with real dollars.
In other words, in about a week we'll want to start shorting this asset. Trump will have absolutely no hesitation to hyperinflate it just printing more trump coins. This man doesn't do subtle or half measures, he goes big, and this is going to fail in a big way.
I wish more people understood this. Especially in the press, since its their job to educate everyone else.
Trading volume is what matters, not trading price. It's only worth $25 billion if you can turn $25 billion of it into cash.
Unfortunately since banks still haven't take wised up to this, and the wildcat crypto banks really haven't, its likely still possible to pump a meme coin and then take out loans against the purported asset value. The bank is then left trying to repossess a pile of worthless memecoin when you fail to repay the loan.
I'd like to add that trade volume is only a slightly better indicator, because wash trading is very easy in crypto. Wash trading happens when the coin's owner and/or an accomplice buy and sell coins back and forth among themselves. It's easy to do if you have control over a huge amount of coins, because you printed them yourself at the low low price of $0. This has two effects: the trade volume grows, which makes it look like there is public interest in the coin, and you can pump up the price at the same time.
Can't decide if I'm annoyed that this poorly-disguised influence scheme will go unpunished, or if thrilled that many very deserving people will be separated from their money.
We literally have (what I think is) a scam instance with a bunch of accounts made in the same day that's been online in the fedi for about 20 days now @realbitcoin.cash. Why is there a fedi instance seemingly making fake accounts to pump bitcoincash? Doesn't Bitcoincash have an ETF?
Why were all the accounts made on the same day if this is organic and not an admin making a bunch of accounts?
Sorry man, this kind of stuff doesn't pass my personal sniff test (you do you), and the fact that it's already here doesn't make me go "gosh this isn't a scam at all."
I'm sure that's the first payment of the bribes from Russia and Saudis. Untraceable and the plausible irrationality of buying memecoins deflects questions.
It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have $25 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 24 hours previously.
Old Man stock market looks up and chuckles "That's my boy...line go up."
That's how they got the number but it's a big mistake to use total supply. Also it's not because the market cap is 12G that Trump received 12G. It's probably much much lower. He must have made only 50 to 100M in fees, if any. And the price he sold the coins at was much much lower than today