We wanted to ignore it. Now we can't.
For years, many people have harbored a secret question: What actually is cryptocurrency? Maybe they understood it in some sense—money that existed via some unhackable code?—but they didn’t really get it. Some of us at Slate didn’t get it, frankly! Perhaps you didn’t really get it either. The thing was, for a long time, you could get by in society without really understanding crypto.
Now, in America, that’s no longer true. Crypto is in ascendance—and to understand what it is, and how it works, is foundational to understanding the great American scam that’s currently playing out right in front of all of us in the White House and beyond. You can’t grasp the reality of the second Trump presidency if you don’t start here.
Though he is a relative latecomer to the crypto universe, Trump has realized that he can personally make vast sums of money off it. And thanks to their steadfast support of his latest run for president, crypto enthusiasts have been rewarded with remarkable positions of power in Trump’s new administration—all while he continues to strip down every governmental means of regulation.
What will this mean in the long run? Financial experts are watching warily. The embrace of crypto will not be contained, they predict. As crypto is integrated more thoroughly into all our financial systems, the entire economy is becoming more vulnerable to the crash experts worry is coming.
What does this mean imminently? It means that we can no longer ignore crypto as an alternative financial universe that does not apply to all of us. That’s where these stories come in: We made this as a guide for anyone who has been sitting on the sidelines of this universe, because now there is no sitting on the sidelines. We are all players in crypto, and we need to know what it’s doing to us.
Here, you’ll find a glossary breaking down what all the ridiculous terms that get batted around when talking about crypto actually mean. We’ve also created a guide to all the crypto dudes (and, yes, they are mainly dudes) who have come to positions of power in this administration. And we’ve pulled together sharp essays on how this is manifesting in ways that have become all too familiar—how it contributes to the eerie feeling that America has devolved into a casino, how Trump uses immigrants as the scapegoat for societal ills like fentanyl but gives a pass to the real culprit (yes, it is crypto), and the crucial crypto connection to our ever-declining environment. We’ve provided a guide detailing what parts of the greater crypto universe are serious and what are not. And Slate’s tech podcast, What Next TBD, has done its own special project: It actually made a meme coin itself. (Don’t worry, the show explains what that is.) It might be the most illustrative avenue here to grasp the scam of crypto—the ultimate explanation of why it is so easy for the rich to get richer and so hard for everyone else. It really is everything you need to know about Trump’s America. #binanceEarnYiendArena #BCSProjectSpotlight #BSCTrendingCoin