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Secret Deals, Foreign Investments: The Rise of Trump’s Crypto Firm
- biglyburrito 1y agohttps://archive.md/iHaIo https://archive.md/iHaIo
- bediger4000 1y agoThis article is soft peddling corruption, and it confirms that Trump takes bribes via his cryptocurrency operation.
- conception 1y agoI mean, he took bribes last time via his hotel operation. This just is an upgrade.
- TechDebtDevin 1y agoI prefer the term, "alternative funding mechsnism" ;) Thats all Truth Social was. By buying the public stock you could in a way funnel money to Trump that did conflict with campaign finance laws/limits. People arent buying Truth Social stock because they think its actually worth 5 billion dollars.
- maeln 1y ago> People arent buying Truth Social stock because they think its actually worth 5 billion dollars. Well, if you see it as the private presidential corruption fund, it might well be worth well over 5 billion tbf.
- alistairSH 1y agoThat this is even remotely surprising to anybody is the only surprising thing about it. He took bribes via his hotel last time. He takes massive donations from Bezos and Zuck and others to his inauguration fund or presidential library or whatever other slush funds he can use to skirt anti-bribery regulations.
- dashundchen 1y agoLet's not forget the MBS overriding the advice of the Saudi investment board to give $2 billion dollars to Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner. Funds with hefty fees that have barely been invested. https://www.reuters.com/world/kushner-has-discussed-us-saudi-diplomacy-with-saudi-crown-prince-2024-10-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/kushner-has-discussed-us-saudi... These corrupt assholes don't even try to hide it.
- ChainOfFools 1y agoThe fact that Bitcoin (and kin) turbocharges corruption, and its success is a direct result of doing so on a wide scale (the whole point is to undermine state power by dwpriving it of control over currency) is proof to the armchair economist Bitcoin supporters that it is "sound money" and things like facilitating a market for circulation of child porn at one end and open political grift at the other, are welcomed as signs that the *experiment" is working as intended in their winner-corrupts-all bitcoin maximalist worldview. Its called kleptocurrency for good reason. Those who support it on philosophical grounds will destruction on everyone else for the sake of their own gain, and should be viewed with all possible hostility as they constitute an intentional community of public enemies in the plainest possible sense.
- tphyahoo2 1y agoFurious words and threats won't stop bitcoin. Neither will bans and prohibitions, unless you are willing to go full north korea with cameras everywhere and computers locked down. And you'll probably fail with that. You're beating your fists against an ocean. Touch some grass.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoOf course you can. 20 years in prision for using Bitcoin. Not a lot of people would wanna risk that. And when 99,99% chooses to not touch it with a pole the value will collapse. Then a few people can sit there with Bitcoins that no one wants to buy from them. Is it a good idea? Mayne not. But obviously one can crush Bitcoin if one wants.
- tim333 1y agoExcept it's multinational. China declared bitcoin illegal in 2021 but it still seems to exist.
- tphyahoo2 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization "Is it a good idea?" No, not "obviously one crush" and nor are there no consequences if one were to try. https://archive.md/qlbDM#selection-49.0-49.64 https://archive.md/qlbDM#selection-49.0-49.64 ("Georg Ritter von Flondor, and what his unhappy life can teach us")
- basejumping 1y agoHis son is currently on a tour of eastern europe presenting his crypto 'opportunity' to 'investors'
- mexicocitinluez 1y ago[flagged]
- ecshafer 1y agoThat is precisely the attitude that those “yokels” decided they would fully back Trump. When people are abandoned by the economic and political system, someone coming in telling them that they will get revenge, is how you get a enthusiastic supporters.
- voidfunc 1y ago[flagged]
- mexicocitinluez 1y agoThey've voted against their own interests (aka Republican) for the last 40 years and people still have the gall to be like "You can't call them stupid".
- voidfunc 1y agoI think most people genuinely try to find the best in other human beings but you're right. They've been doing this shit for closer to half a century, at some point you need to call a spade a spade. They're morons and they have outsized influence in the US because of how our political system works. Fuck them.
- mexicocitinluez 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mexicocitinluez 1y ago
- instagib 1y ago“Under the company’s rules, the Trumps and other World Liberty investors are not allowed to sell their coins on the open market, though the company has said it might eventually lift that restriction if other buyers of the coin agree.” I have heard this one before.
- hypeatei 1y agoI don't see much references to "the swamp" anymore now that we have a sitting president doing a crypto grift. I thought dark money and mysterious figures pulling the strings is conspiracy worthy but I guess not when it's Trump.
- gooseus 1y agoWell, he drained the swamp, now he's doing what he does best, paving it over and building a soon-to-be-failed casino. Say what you will about "the swamp" (not a big fan myself), but as a metaphor it kinda works since a swamp may be noxious and filled with unsavory swamp creatures... but it's still an ecosystem where competition and co-evolution amongst these swamp species in response to external environmental changes would still be expected.
- binary132 1y agoIt’s simple, see. I can’t believe nobody has explained this to you yet. Your swamp creatures bad, my swamp creatures good.
- LadyCailin 1y agoRepublicans straight up lie, but their base is too ignorant to see that. Not to mention the propaganda machine that is Fox News brainwashing them. OR they aren’t ignorant, and are fully aware of things, and instead are scum.
- dfxm12 1y agoNo one is this ignorant, but if Republicans keep killing education, we'll get there one day.
- soco 1y agoOr, the conspiracies have been proven true, but it's not with those who the conspiracy-lovers would have expected. Not woke, not Soros, but Trump and his gang were running the exact racket. So I suppose now suddenly the racket is good, doublethink by the book.
- bgwalter 1y agoInteresting. I thought you could do this in the open: https://www.theverge.com/news/646426/a-1-million-per-head-dinner-at-mar-a-lago-is-how-you-get-ai-chips-to-china https://www.theverge.com/news/646426/a-1-million-per-head-di... Is the Sovereign Bitcoin Fund bailout scam still on the table or is Bitcoin doing well enough so that it isn't needed any longer?
- immibis 1y agoIIRC this was an available bet on Polymarket, where bitcoiners kept insisting it already happened, ever since the executive order was issued, but that's crypto folks for you. (I didn't look up how and whether that resolved)
- antifa 1y agoImagine if it was possible for the wrong person to walk into Fort Knox then suddenly all the gold was teleported to a random location.
- m00dy 1y ago[flagged]
- whyage 1y agoWhat can be done to stop this flagrant grift?
- dboreham 1y agoDevelop USA2.0 with various bugs fixed: no presidential pardon, supreme court reform, term limits, FBI removed from executive branch, etc.
- voidfunc 1y agoGonna need a Civil War 2.0 first.
- Loughla 1y agoYou joke about these things but I'm afraid that's where we're heading. Trump will close off as much opposition as he can in the next two years. Then spend a year convincing people that term limits aren't required by the constitution. By then we'll have had so many scandals and constitutional crisis events that just get ignored that it will happen. Am I being overdramatic? Because this feels different. It feels openly hostile.
- cruzcampo 1y ago[flagged]
- voidfunc 1y agoI wasn't joking.
- nrclark 1y agoI don't think you're being overdramatic. At this point, I'd give 50/50 odds that Trump will install himself as a Putin-style dictator (if we're not already there). "Elections" will happen, but the outcome will always be the same at the national level.
- cmurf 1y ago
- VeejayRampay 1y agoanyone from europe recognizes this immediately as some form of thieving monarchy, it really is ludicrous that is still possible in 2025
- mmastrac 1y agoAs long as you have the Enemy you can run the Grift. Tale as old as money, at least.
- yalogin 1y agoThe amount of corruption and incompetence ignored by his base is staggering. This is all because they don’t like immigration?
- nine_zeros 1y ago[flagged]
- whatever1 1y agoNo, the current system does not work for most of the people hence the "just nuke it" option sounds like a rational one. Canadian elections show that people can change their mind overnight, but unfortunately some of the changes that happened in the US institutions and the global relations will take decades to reverse (if ever).
- geremiiah 1y ago> the current system does not work for most of the people Bullshit. America is the richest country on earth. Your unemployment is remarkably low. Your disposable income is relatively high. And all the issues you complain about, like housing, are worse outside the US than in the US. Moreover, a lot of the MAGA people are NOT working class struggling families. There are a lot of middle class middle aged low digit millionaires who are certainly not hurting for anything, but for some reason really love Trump.
- adiabatichottub 1y agoIt's not just simply economic. I'd say it's more like there are many groups of people who do not feel represented by their government. Some of these groups are quite opposed to each other. Add to that politics and media that have become intentionally divisive and you get a society where everybody is mad about or scared of something.
- whatever1 1y agoHow do you explain the majority of 18-25 yo who voted for Trump? Also from polling the ones who did not vote were also leaning towards Trump. So participation was not the issue.
- techterrier 1y agopresumably this is what the web 3.0 crowd who backed Trump, including our own hosts, had in mind
- faustocarva 1y agoYeah, our host is a big trump supporter
- cruzcampo 1y agoIt's time to realize that our "industry leaders" are bad people who are actively enabling fascism in the pursuit of personal power.
- WinstonSmith84 1y agoas a "crypto" enthusiast, this is sad to see that he is making this industry looking really bad - obviously he doesn't care, money is money. In the future, maybe even now, we are going to have those associating crypto to Trump .. The lack of regulations in crypto make these scams legals without any fear of any repercussion
- angusturner 1y agoThe thing is though, once you regulate crypto then what’s the point? You are left with a highly inefficient/expensive and immutable database. Bitcoin solves (or attempts to solve) for exchange in absence of trust and regulation. But this is a stupid thing to solve for, because without trust and regulation you can’t even have a functioning society.
- angusturner 1y agoI would actually say that scams and financial crimes seem to be the only concrete use case of the technology at the moment. (Unless you count speculation/gambling).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- echelon 1y agoI'm 99% against crypto and think it's mostly a tool for wasting limited human innovation capital, enabling fraud, terrorist financing, ponzi scheme gambling, and pump and dump rug pulling. There are a few areas where I find crypto interesting or useful: - The existing banking and payments industry is too Christian / Mormon. It extra-judicially regulates anything it views as "vices". This industry is supposed to be dumb payment rails with hooks for FinCEN to stop crime. It's not supposed to be your pastor. If anything, business integration with regular payment rails would help them be better regulated. - "Stablecoins" or whatever the hell they're called seem like a wickedly efficient way to move money between businesses and countries without paying large fees or having to wait for clearance. Ideally they can even cut Visa and the fintech monopolies out of the equation. This is more of a B2B rather than consumer / individual application, and it seems genuinely useful. It also seems compatible with the existing FinCEN / FINRA / AML regulations. If you look at it long enough, it doesn't even feel like crypto. Just a new type of efficiency. The latter may make the former a non-issue, especially if the existing fintech industry receives more competition from upstarts that don't have to pay the legacy gateways and their frictionful fees.
- cruzcampo 1y agoRemember, they made Jimmy Carter sell his peanut farm. It's ridiculous how the US has gone downhill since.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 1y agoThe creation of the trump coin is a signal to the crypto community that the SEC will stop going after crypto companies. I have read alot of people who ended up going into crypto and some even getting lucrative investment from Andreeson horowitz, lightspeed, etc etc. And then one day, they get a letter in the mail saying they are now a Politically Exposed Entity (PEE). Then all of their banks drop them, they can't get credit and they can't get loans. The SEC put out a letter saying "Come work with us", and when the founders tried, they would become a PEE instantly. There was no recourse with the SEC, and many smart people ended up completely losing their lives. The only way they could get back to 'real' life, was by trying to go into a different industry and 'avoid the eye' which was, who knows? Now, as the trump + melania coin acting as a grift, instead of "alternative funding mechanism". I mean, you could already 'donate' directly to the president, and even get a tax writeoff for it. Atleast this way you'll have to pay capital gains. You could already pay $1m to get a audience with the president, how is this any different? Hunter Biden made multi-million dollar deals, and got paid 50k a month for a being on various boards... despite being a known drugie. the "Top 200 holders" get a dinner with the president. Not saying it's better or worse, just saying it's pretty much the same thing that every president has had access to. It's not that i entirely believe all of this, but i would like to provide some counter weight to all the comments that are all just parroting "Grift".
- ordinaryradical 1y agoShouting over and over again, “This is normal” doesn’t make something morally acceptable. If any of this is (arguably) normal we should tear down the systems that support these norms. They are bad norms. The solution is never, “Welp, people are corrupt, what can you do?” You start making changes in the legal system. Because if you don’t you’re giving the country away as though there were no other course of action.
- ceejayoz 1y ago> I mean, you could already 'donate' directly to the president, and even get a tax writeoff for it. What? Campaign donations are not tax exempt. > Hunter Biden made multi-million dollar deals, and got paid 50k a month for a being on various boards... despite being a known drugie. Musk is also a "known druggie"; his ketamine habit is self-admitted, and he smoked pot on Rogan. (Briefly risking his contracts, even!) > the "Top 200 holders" get a dinner with the president. Not saying it's better or worse, just saying it's pretty much the same thing that every president has had access to. Not in the slightest. There are legal limits on how much money you can give the President.
- revel 1y agoI was a big enough believer in crypto to literally start a company in this space only to leave it completely disenchanted and deeply pessimistic about the direction of the industry. I felt that there were many real legal and regulatory challenges that governments just didn't want to deal with. No government wants to enable money laundering, black markets, corruption and terrorism; or so I thought! Now we're in a situation that's so much worse than I ever imagined -- Trump coins are vehicles for naked bribery and corruption with a sprinkle of encryption on top. I was worried about black markets, Trump has literally been using his office to grant access to top holders of his scam coin. This is a big lesson for everyone about why some degree of regulation is necessary.
- cruzcampo 1y agoIt takes a lot of character to admit you were wrong and see the error of your ways. Congrats!
- dylan604 1y ago>No government wants to enable money laundering, black markets, corruption and terrorism; or so I thought! what ever gave you that thought? There are countries that do this right out in the open. The rest of the countries do it in various shades of gray to not be right out in the open, but still visible for those that can see in higher bit depths of gray than black and white
- Sammi 1y agoYou're not wrong, but your comment lacks so much necessary detail that I find it's just causing noise.
- dylan604 1y agoI mean, how much details do you need for this to be understood? Every tinpot dictator openly run black markets, are the definition of corrupt, while many openly operate or support terrorist organizations within their borders. Depending one looking at the US from the point of view of someone living in a country they have rained freedom down on for the past quarter century probably feels the same towards the US. Launching missiles from a remotely operated drone blowing up buildings while incurring civilian casualties definitely has the feeling of terrorism to me. They just hide it under the veil of defeating terrorism shades of gray. I really feel like your comment was much more noisy than mine ever was.
- joejoo 1y ago[flagged]
- Havoc 1y agoI miss the days when new coins at least attempted to pretend they contain some sort of financial innovation. There was at least a possibility of something of substance there. Now it's all celebrity endorsement, hype and lies. And having the US prez jump on that bandwagon and ride it while in office is just mind-boggling.
- cmurf 1y agoIsn't this culture day to day centered on celebrity endorsements, hype and lies? Seems like what's happening is unsurprising. A nation of spectators, not citizens.
- satanfirst 1y agoFad intangible assets is pretty mind boggling to me. If you are thinking someone is the next Shakespeare while they are alive then you are probably going to be wrong and when you are right their coin should warrant a future value that is marginal compared to whatever the teeny bops actually prefer in a hundred years.
- ethbr1 1y ago> And having the US prez jump on that bandwagon and ride it while in office is just mind-boggling. I'd suspect there will be a lot of room for "non-official acts" charges related to Trump's pump-and-dump crypto schemes after he leaves office. And fewer politicians are going to have incentive to stick with him then.