Trump Keeps TAKEing

Trump’s prescient timing strikes again…

In a past issue, we discussed how Trump tends to blur the lines between his presidency and his business ventures.

Specifically, his involvement in certain corners of the digital asset space has been, at the very least, eyebrow-raising and had Democrats (understandably) up in arms over the ethical considerations.

And these various forays into digital assets have only hurt the chances of comprehensive crypto legislation.

Well, it’s happening again.

And it’s happening just as conversations around digital assets are gaining momentum.

Here’s what I mean…

The TAKE Playbook

Trump and his family issued the MELANIA and TRUMP memecoins in the days prior to his presidential inauguration. Memecoins are best described as souvenirs. They lack intrinsic value.

That alone might seem odd, but not necessarily unethical. It’s what came next that mattered.

Shortly after the memecoin launches, Trump held an event at his Virginia golf club. It was an event reserved for the top 220 investors of his TRUMP memecoin. This was, understandably, considered a classic pay-for-access scheme.

The timing couldn’t have been worse…

This roughly coincided with stablecoin legislation called the GENIUS Act. It was also just before the CLARITY Act was introduced in the House of Representatives.

The GENIUS Act managed to get over the finish line. But the controversy around the Virginia event only hurt the reputation of digital assets and hindered progress with CLARITY.

Then came World Liberty Financial…

As we shared in Trump’s Crypto Sideshow, the World Liberty Financial (WLF) team deposited 5 billion of its WLFI tokens worth more than $505 million into a lending and borrowing protocol called Dolomite.

That value was more than three times the amount of assets locked on Dolomite prior to the event. What was even more interesting: Dolomite’s founder sits on the WLF advisory team. Maybe it’s all above board. But it smelled like a typical case of self-dealing.

The president has been cagey about his connection to World Liberty Financial. But even the scent of an ethical scandal was enough to drain support from CLARITY.

The timing, again, couldn’t have been worse.

It all went down just as the U.S. Senate Banking Committee was expected to mark up the CLARITY Act to advance it to the floor.

By now, stock traders are familiar with TACO—Trump Always Chickens Out.

The digital asset world might need its own acronym—TAKE, or Trump Always Keeps Everything.

And the TAKE is happening again.

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The Most Recent TAKE

A troubling question is starting to bubble to the surface: Does President Trump actually want to make a deal for the CLARITY Act?

The main sticking point is around ethics language. A potential deal was put in front of the president well before the U.S. Senate went on recess. But the White House didn’t comment or respond with a counterproposal.

Many who were close to the process described it as being in limbo. Which is odd. The president made pro-crypto legislation a big pillar of his administration, and the White House would have known time was running out for CLARITY.

But maybe the president was busy…

During this waiting period, his media entity Trump Media & Technology Group launched the Truth API. This is where clients are charged up to $100,000 per month for faster access to market-moving posts from the president and other top accounts.

It’s like selling a ticket to front-run the market.

That was earlier this month.

And now there’s the latest…

Crypto CEOs are expected to meet the president shortly after this essay is published for you all to read. This includes some of the largest names in the industry. The SEC and CFTC chairs are both expected to be in attendance.

This new meeting was announced shortly after the SEC canceled its own meeting last Friday, a meeting that was expected to hit on some heavy topics like tokenized stocks.

The expectation, as we laid out in our last issue Crypto’s Dog Days, is that banks were pushing hard behind the scenes to stall CLARITY.

Shortly after we published, it was revealed the Wall Street trade group called the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) likely influenced the meeting being canceled. SIFMA apparently discussed suing the SEC if it went ahead with its plans last Friday.

Instead of sitting still, the SEC proposed new fundraising rules for crypto yesterday. The proposed rule would allow projects to raise up to $75 million in a 12-month period without completing full securities registration. There’s also a startup exemption for up to $5 million in fundraising over four years.

It’s something.

What I personally like is that both rules have stronger disclosure requirements. That’s a welcome change considering some of the unfortunate realities that we detailed in Crypto’s Ugly Secret…

So here we are…

The SEC releases a new proposal. The White House is meeting with crypto executives today to find ways to support the digital asset industry without Congress.

Momentum is building. Parties are eager to hammer out solutions to bring greater certainty to digital assets in the United States.

And the Trump TAKE happens…

Bad Optics

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is the entity that charters, regulates, and supervises national banks and federal savings associations. It’s essentially the gatekeeper of who gets a bank.

The OCC gave preliminary conditional approval to the World Liberty Trust Company. This is the banking arm of World Liberty Financial (WLF).

Readers might recall WLF has its own USD1 stablecoin. The banking charter allows WLF to issue and redeem USD1, maintain reserves, and custody digital assets as a fiduciary.

The president is getting his own bank. And he’s getting it from the very entity he presides over.

The response is what you would expect…

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats wasted no time in introducing the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act. The name says it all. The bill likely won’t be taken seriously. It’s more about grabbing headlines, which it did.

But either way, it’s terrible optics. Again.

The consistent TAKE truly raises the question…

Does the Trump administration really want to make America the crypto capital of the world?

Or is this just about taking advantage of an industry that’s still—from a regulatory perspective—getting its legs under it?

Only time will tell.

Your Pulse on Crypto,

Ben Lilly
Editor, Chain of Thought