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Crypto has come a long way since Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper in 2008.
There was Bitcoin-bought pizza, memecoins, the 2021 DeFi summer, and the fall of FTX.
Now a new landmark development has taken place — Donald Trump’s gala dinner for the top 220 holders of his memecoin.
The event last week will reshape the crypto narrative in a powerful, and perhaps, immutable way.
Like it or not, Trump, with all his showmanship and disregard for the norms of his office, has put his stamp in the $3.6 trillion industry.
Range of businesses
In the minds of many who may be new to crypto, the Trump brand is rapidly becoming synonymous with Bitcoin and its ilk as the president and his family pursue a range of crypto-driven businesses.
Given that the White House and its Republican allies are creating the regulatory regime that will govern the industry at the same time the president and his family are enriching themselves on crypto, well, that’s an issue.
On Thursday night, Trump’s tuxedoed memecoin holders were greeted with cries of “Shame!” and one Democratic senator branded the event a “crypto corruption club,” Aleks Gilbert reported.
Even Trump crypto supporters are uncomfortable. Nic Carter this week grumbled that Trump was “hugging us to death”
With Bitcoin hitting an all-time high this week, it’s easy to shrug off Trump’s opportunism as having little effect on crypto’s fortunes.
Or more to the point, his embrace is the reason Bitcoin and the rest of the market are surging.
Yet over the long term, Trump’s new role as the biggest crypto bro on the planet will undoubtedly change what management consultants like to call the brand equity of the entire blockchain proposition.
The Musk effect
If being crypto also means you’re MAGA, will that deter millions of would-be investors from buying Bitcoin ETFs or opening accounts at Coinbase or Kraken?
Maybe.
Elon Musk’s tarnishing of the Tesla brand — the electric automaker’s profits tumbled a staggering 71% in the first quarter as Musk pursued his radical cost-cutting DOGE programme in Washington — jumps to mind.
What is clear is that the US president, the epitome of centralised power, is writing the next chapter of the story begun 17 years ago by Satoshi’s nine-page treatise.
Edward Robinsonis the story editor forDL News. Contact the author [email protected].
