When Trump posted a related video, he mentioned a decentralized finance (DiFi) project called World Liberty Financial, which is a cryptocurrency project that Trump's son has been promoting recently. A month ago, Trump made several promises to the crypto community, including making the USA the first country to classify bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.
Former US President Trump, who is running for president again, once again raised the banner of promoting cryptocurrencies and used the crypto community to campaign for himself.
On Thursday, August 29th, US Eastern Time, Trump posted a short video on the social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter. In the video, Trump said,
"This afternoon, I will announce my plan to ensure that the United States becomes the global capital of cryptocurrencies."
The video did not provide specific details, but only claimed anonymously in the video, "They want to strangle you. They want to strangle your business. We won't let that happen."
Along with the video, Trump's post mentioned a decentralized finance (DeFi) project called World Liberty Financial. This is a project that Trump's son has been promoting recently.
DiFi is seen as a branch of the cryptocurrency field. The traditional financial system architecture is centralized, but DiFi, as the name suggests, offers a decentralized alternative. It uses a public blockchain network for transactions, replacing centralized service providers such as custodians, central securities exchanges, or trustees with so-called smart contracts. Smart contracts are instructions in the form of computer code. This code is stored on a public blockchain and is executed as part of the system's consensus rules. Supporters of DiFi claim that projects like this will achieve financial democratization.
When Trump mentioned World Liberty Financial on X on Thursday, the public was not clear about what this organization specifically does. The organization has launched a channel on the social media platform Telegram, which currently has over 0.052 million subscribers. The latest post on this channel cheered for Trump's mention of the organization on X, urging everyone to show support and advance DiFi together.
Some media comments have said that Trump's current attitude towards cryptos is a complete 180-degree turnaround from the past, as he once believed that cryptos were a criminal scam. Trump's support for the crypto industry has prompted some executives in the industry to stand with him, including prominent capitalists like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
About a month ago at the Bitcoin 2024 conference, Trump made a series of eye-catching commitments to the crypto community:
- Making the USA the first country to classify Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset and allowing the federal government to retain approximately 0.21 million BTC it currently holds.
- Removing the current Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) who is viewed as having a hostile attitude towards the crypto industry.
- Establishing a Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Presidential Advisory Council to formulate crypto policies for the USA.
- Encouraging power plants to strengthen electrical supply for Bitcoin mining and exploring synergies between the crypto industry and electric vehicle industry.
Trump's change in stance not only highlights the increasing importance of cryptos in the U.S. political landscape, but also reflects new thinking in Trump's camp on economic policies. Cryptos are becoming a "battleground" in the election, with some U.S. officials proposing more aggressive policies to support cryptos and suggesting that the government should buy Bitcoin. However, Trump only promised to maintain the current amount of BTC held by the U.S. government, which seemed to disappoint the crypto community. On the day Trump made these commitments, Bitcoin experienced a V-shaped market trend.
The crypto community has recently been capitalizing on the "hot topics" surrounding Trump. As of this Tuesday, four sets of Trump-related non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been released. The latest batch of NFTs, released on Tuesday, includes images of Trump dressed in superhero outfits and holding symbolic Bitcoins, with a price of $99 per token. Trump's company, CIC Digital LLC, has already earned $7.2 million in revenue by licensing the use of his image for NFTs, and their crypto wallet holds at least $1 million worth of Ethereum.
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