Why Does the Far Right Love Crypto?
Crypto appeals to the far right for several reasons. It promises to undermine the state’s central authority. It offers a degree of anonymity, which can facilitate tax evasion, asset parking overseas, and plain old money-laundering. And its volatility allows for the profiteering that sometimes goes by the name of entrepreneurialism.
Meanwhile, for extremist organizations that need to stay under the radar to evade surveillance, crypto is the monetary equivalent of an encrypted messaging service. According to the Anti-Defamation League, “15 white supremacist and antisemitic groups and individuals, as well as their donors, that collectively moved $142,546 worth of cryptocurrency to and/or from 22 different cryptocurrency service providers.” The European far right is also beginning to trade in these currencies.
In countries with conventional governance—that is, not lunatics like Trump and locos like Milei—crypto functions as a right-wing weapon against the state. But when the inmates take over the asylum, the currency becomes a way of consolidating power in the hands of oligarchs.
Meme coins like $TRUMP and $LIBRA are just the side hustles by opportunists who want some of the crumbs that fall off the oligarchs’ tables. The real money is in the “legitimate” trade in crypto, the speculation in Bitcoin and Dogecoin. This is where far-right politicians create “positive synergies” between government deregulation on one side and campaign contributions on the other.
This institutional corruption is at the center of the Trump/Milei enterprise: the wholesale looting of the public sector and the grotesque enrichment of the already rich.
Crypto and the Far Right
Back in 2021, Donald Trump called cryptocurrency “a disaster waiting to happen” and a “scam.” Takes one to know one, right?
As he got closer to regaining the White House, however, Trump changed his mind about this “scam,” probably as a result of the millions of dollars that flowed into his campaign coffers from industry donors. To the delight of these donors, Trump promised to make the United States the cryptocurrency capital of the world. He also talked about creating a strategic reserve of Bitcoin.
After he won the election, Trump received over $11 million in contributions to his inaugural committee from the crypto industry. It’s a hallmark of pyramid scams that only the people at the top reap the benefits, and Trump has put himself at the very apex of the ziggurat in order to rake in millions for his posse and for himself.
Consider the saga of $TRUMP.Three days before his inauguration, the $TRUMP meme coin debuted. Meme coins are usually based on an Internet meme and are “typically characterized by their volatile nature.” Well, that sounds like a good fit for Trump! Indeed, after he promoted the coin on his social media accounts, its value surged astronomically.
- One of those firms was CIC Digital, which is owned by…Trump himself.
Like all financial operations characterized by irrational exuberance, the value of $TRUMP soon plummeted.
- Indeed, over 800,000 investor accounts lost a total of $2 billion. Of course, they’re not the only Trump supporters who are suffering from buyer’s remorse.
- Even the stock market, which initially cheered Trump’s election, is having a serious hangover, a swing in mood not very different from $TRUMP’s trajectory.
- Argentina’s Javier Milei is now dealing with the aftermath of a corruption scandal associated with $LIBRA, a meme coin he initially supported and which left 10,000 investors over $250 million poorer.
- El Salvador is still reeling from Nayib Bukele’s crypto obsession, which cost his country $60 million when Bitcoin tanked a couple years ago—not to mention all the Salvadoran energy and natural resources that Bitcoin mining has absorbed.
[. . .]
Trump Also Goes Big
It’s no accident that the administration’s government-cutting initiative, DOGE, shares a name with a leading cryptocurrency.
- Cutting government oversight, eliminating regulations, and empowering the already-powerful private sector all benefit the crypto industry.
- But Trump is not just cutting government—he is putting his own people into positions of power.
- Sacks comes out of the same political milieu as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel (with whom he led PayPal).
- As with so many of Trump’s appointees, the opportunities for corruption abound.
- As MSNBC reported at the end of last year, “Sacks launched an artificial intelligence company called Glue this year and is known to be a major investor in cryptocurrencies, which would seem likely to create some conflicts of interest if he’s steering the administration’s AI and crypto policies.”
Trump is also staffing the Securities and Exchange Commission with crypto loyalists who have already begun to deconstruct the oversight of the crypto sector. As The New York Times notes:
Federal officials declared that so-called memecoins would not be subject to strict oversight. A series of investigations into major cryptocurrency firms were halted. And the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to pause a fraud case against a top crypto entrepreneur. Just over a month since President Trump’s inauguration, U.S. regulators have almost entirely dismantled a years-long government crackdown on the crypto industry, a volatile sector rife with fraud, scams and theft.
Meme coins, of course, are the $TRUMP and $MELANIA scams that have
already bilked thousands of investors. 
The reduction of oversight on crypto, meanwhile, is likely to increase the pool of victims. Burwick Law is the firm trying to claw back money for those who were scammed by $HAWK (promoted by influencer Haliey Welch) and also 200 clients from various countries who lost money in the $LIBRA scandal. Dubbed the “ambulance chaser of crypto,” Max Burwick is going to face a deregulatory headwind coming from the Trump administration.
But the biggest crypto project of the Trump administration is its crypto strategic reserve, an idea promoted hard by the crypto industry. It’s the culmination of the right-wing’s push for U.S. businesses to invest in crypto and also state governments buy up the currency. A strategic reserve of crypto makes no sense. Such reserves are meant for valuable assets like oil and gold. Why doesn’t Trump consider a strategic reserve of Amway products or Tupperware?
- For the time being, the two reserves (one for Bitcoin, the second for other digital assets) will contain only crypto seized in criminal or civil forfeitures.
- The crypto industry was disappointed that Trump didn’t mandate federal purchases of the currencies.
- But that will probably happen in the future.
- The new initiative calls on federal agencies to come up with strategies to buy more Bitcoin.
- And there’s now a bill in Congress calling on the government to buy a million Bitcoin.
So, basically, such a reserve is just a gift to all the crypto loyalists who have supported Trump. Let’s call it what it is: a first step toward state capture by crypto oligarchs.
RELATED
LOOKING FOR LIQUIDITY: $MELANIA
In a bizarre development, after the launch of Trump Memecoin Melania Trump launched her own. . .
The once and future first lady, Melania Trump, at a digital art show. Photo: Charly Tribaulleau/AFP
Two days after her president-elect husband generated potentially tens of billions of dollars with a new meme coin, first-lady-in-waiting Melania Trump launched her own coin Sunday night: MELANIA.
Why it matters: The Trump family became crypto billionaires this weekend, simultaneously raising difficult questions about the boundaries between their official roles and personal profits.
Trump Crypto Triumph- Coin Soars 300%, Smashing $8 Billion Market Cap And Shaking Up The Crypto World!
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