Author: Muyao Shen, Bloomberg; Translated by: Tao Zhu, Golden Finance
Donald Trump appears to be wading deeper into the digital asset space, saying he will unveil plans to ensure the United States becomes the “crypto capital of the planet.”
The former U.S. president and current Republican presidential candidate was less specific in a video message posted on the X social media platform on Thursday. The post included a link to World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance project that his son has been promoting. While few details were revealed, the site's metadata describes the project as a "cutting-edge" DeFi platform that will connect users with "the best tools in decentralized finance for secure, high-yield crypto investments."
“This afternoon, I will lay out my plan to ensure that the United States becomes the crypto capital of the planet,” Trump said in the video.
In a sea change of tone toward the asset class, which he dismissed as a criminal scam while in office, Trump was a featured speaker at a bitcoin conference last month, with donors being asked to pay $844,600 to attend a roundtable with Trump.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a branch of cryptocurrency that aims to eliminate intermediaries such as banks and brokers through the use of software-driven applications. Its supporters claim that DeFi projects will democratize finance.
"They want to strangle you. They want to bankrupt you," Trump said in the video on X, without specifying who "they" were. "We're not going to let that happen."
Supporters say the regulatory crackdown on cryptocurrencies has made the U.S. a less friendly country to build DeFi projects. Uniswap Labs, the creator of the largest DeFi trading platform on the Ethereum blockchain, said earlier this year that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had warned it of potential enforcement action for operating as an unregistered exchange and broker-dealer.
The setup of the project promoted by Eric and Donald Trump Jr. remains unclear. World Liberty Financial has launched a channel on the social media platform Telegram with more than 52,000 subscribers. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was charged in France this week with conspiracy to distribute child pornography and other crimes.
“President Donald J. Trump just mentioned World Liberty Financial on Twitter!” the latest message on the Telegram channel read. “Let’s show our support and keep moving forward! Be Defiant!”
The fourth series of non-fungible tokens launched on Tuesday, featuring images of the former president in a superhero costume and holding a symbolic bitcoin. The NFTs are priced at $99 each.
Trump’s CIC Digital LLC has earned $7.2 million from licensing his image on NFTs and has at least $1 million in Ethereum in its crypto wallets.Trump’s support for cryptocurrency has prompted some executives in the industry, including venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, to endorse him.
