Original author: @balajis
Original translation: Scof, ChainCatcher
Overnight, the majority of the next president of the United States’ wealth ($59 billion) is now held in cryptocurrencies. This holds true even if cryptocurrencies drop 90% in value.
what does that mean?
First, President Trump’s assets jumped from perhaps 1% in crypto to over 90% in crypto. Many early holders of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana experienced similar leaps in wealth.
Second, this phenomenon — the relative depreciation of all non-crypto assets — will become a reality experienced by billions of people around the world in our lifetimes as fiat currencies decline.
Third, every politician, influencer, and celebrity in the world is watching this phenomenon and will be closely observing its political and financial consequences. If this “memecoin” survives long term — and that’s a big problem — they may follow suit.
Next, it might not be entirely unacceptable if thousands of individual memecoins emerged on the market, because each buyer knew exactly what he was buying: the potential future brand value of the meme.
The key to everything is whether the value of Trump’s assets can be sustained. If other celebrity meme coins quickly return to zero, Trump is different. He has (a) more than 100 million fans, (b) daily media attention, (c) presidential immunity, and (d) unprecedented government control.
Trump therefore now has a strong incentive to legalize cryptocurrencies in the most radical way possible, regardless of any form of political blowback he faces.
Sure, this could be criticized as a conflict of interest. But the Bidens took a “10% cut,” Pelosi traded stocks, Hillary made money from speeches, Podosta managed a $300 billion climate fund, and Obama signed a Netflix contract. All of these people became millionaires in one way or another, with all sorts of defensible benefits.
So Trumps rebuttal might be that he just does everything in the open. His point might be that transparency solves the conflict of interest problem.
This may be true, but it doesn’t completely solve the alignment problem. For context: a company’s CEO is usually one of the largest shareholders, but his interests are aligned with those of all employees because they own the same stock. Ideally, all shareholders would rise and fall together.
By analogy, the ideal situation is that the president should align his interests with the citizens, such that they all hold some kind of American currency and receive a certain dividend from the profits of the United States. Its a bit like the Alaska Permanent Fund.
One way to solve the alignment problem could be for Trump to airdrop some “Trumpcoins” to every American citizen. But perhaps a simpler approach would be for him to personally email every Trump supporter, offering free Trumpcoins.
Specifically: He can give everyone 72 hours’ notice, by which time even quite a few Democrats will join his mailing list just to get the airdrop.
Is this legal? Well, it is legal for politicians to send donation requests to voters, but as far as I know, no politician has ever attempted a personal airdrop - giving away money - especially on such a large scale.
At current valuations, Trump could airdrop $100 of locked Trumpcoin to each of his 77 million Trump voters, which would cost him $7.7 billion, given that the asset was almost worthless two days ago. Even if he airdropped $500 per person, he would still have more than $20 billion left.
Yes, it would cost Trump some of his money, but if the tokens were earned by joining his mailing list, and the airdrop could be done without capital gains tax, it would “pay for itself” by converting Trump supporters into more committed supporters.
It could even win him enough political support to destroy the Democratic patronage machine. Basically, by joining Trump’s mailing list and supporting his crypto policies, you’re getting something like a basic income.
If 77 million Americans could also benefit from TrumpCoin, the accusation of conflict of interest would cease to exist. It would be a whole new social contract, a personal relationship between the president and the citizens.
Its worth pondering.
