In a fiery
CNBC interview this week, Trump declared war on legacy banking:
“SWIFT is a dinosaur. Banks charge you $50 to move money across borders like it’s 1985. With blockchain, it’s instant, cheap, and transparent. If banks don’t adapt, they’ll be extinct by 2035.”*
Trump’s credentials? He’s backing USD1, a new stablecoin, and headlining CoinDesk’s Consensus 2025 conference. His pitch blends populist rhetoric with Silicon Valley disruptor energy:
“Crypto isn’t just for tech bros. It’s for the truck driver in Ohio who gets nickel-and-dimed by overdraft fees. It’s for the small business owner frozen out by Wall Street.”
The Irony:
Now, the winds are shifting.
- SoFi just relaunched its crypto division, citing “regulatory clarity.”
- JPMorgan quietly expanded its blockchain-based payment network to 12 countries.
- A new bipartisan bill, the
*Digital Asset Innovation Act*, promises tax breaks for crypto startups.
“The government realizes they can’t fight the future,”* says Noto, SoFi’s CEO. *“But they can tax it.”
Conclusion: Crypto’s Civil War
Eric Trump, for all his contradictions, embodies this divide:
A populist championing decentralization while aligning with power brokers. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s collapse exposes crypto’s original sin: any system claiming to democratize money inevitably becomes a tool for the wealthy.
The question isn’t whether blockchain will disrupt finance—it already is. The question is whether it’ll disrupt for the better, or just reshuffle the deck for a new elite.
“Crypto didn’t kill the banks. It just taught them how to code.”
