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President-elect Trump launched his own cryptocurrency overnight and swiftly appeared to make more than $25 billion on paper for himself and his companies. 

Why it matters: The stunning launch of $TRUMP caught the entire industry off-guard, and speaks to both his personal influence and the ascendancy of cryptocurrency in his administration.

  • It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have $25 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 24 hours previously.
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[-] AAA@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

$25 billion, in paper. The value will be down to zero way before he manages to sell off even $1 billion from it. And thats a generous guess. Meme coins don't retain value.

Making ANY money this way is outrageous, but we sooner solve world peace and world hunger than Trump being able to sell this off for the current paper value.

[-] Acters@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah I feel as though he won't get that amount of money either and making any money is also outrageous.

I feel like the biggest pressing issue here is that this is not meant to go to the moon and stay there. Instead I think the real motive is to make inflation. Look at it, it's not meant to gain that amount of value, it's meant to skew our perception of value. This way the current inflationary prices don't look out of place when, in reality, everything is over valued. I guess it is also meant to make some people more complacent to inflation by giving them hope of "there being a chance" even though it clearly details how screwed over most of them will end up in the end compared to the house/dealer. Gambling is and will always be a big problem that adds more pressure to an otherwise unhealthy economy.

[-] AAA@feddit.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

I don't deny the possibility, but that sounds like a lot of foresight which I'm not ready to attribute to Trump or his team. Additionally I don't think they care about "the people". The voters served their purpose. They are meaningless to them now. They will continue to produce anger and outrage, and will extract as much money as possible while it's still possible.

I think it's a simple money grab. Just not a $25 billion one.

[-] jaypatelani@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

He might rename USA to Trumpistan 🤣

[-] aesthelete@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

All the wrong people got money.

QE was a method of upward distribution of wealth.

[-] Matriks404@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

We should have seen that coming.

[-] HammerMii@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

There is a lot more of this coming.

Trump intends to leverage his office to make his family wealthier.

[-] Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

America for sale. You hear that Republicans? You just got sold out.

[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago

It's like auctioning away the presidency

[-] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 2 weeks ago

lol crypto is worth jack shit. I can just keep sending the same money to myself and it would cause the price to go up...

That's not how markets work...

[-] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de -1 points 2 weeks ago

it's how crypto markets do. Since anonymity is a feature, any transactions will increase its value due to it being "used" more

No, because that would be an infinite money glitch, everyone would be rich... (that uses crypto).

It's actually very simple basic market-economics, and independently of anonymity, you buy, you'll drive the price up, you'll sell, you'll drive the price down. It's slightly more complicated, because it involves makers (they set the price at which to sell or buy) and takers (which take the offer by the maker) and psychology (e.g. promotion on youtube to drive the price up) and obviously increasingly algorithms. But in general it's still demand and supply, anonymity doesn't have anything to do here apart from being more prone to scams. Take Monero as example one of the most anonym cryptos but still fairly stable (in crypto terms).

So to drive the price up, you either have to have some kind of good promotion (which at the end is just money from someone else), or a lot of money yourself.

[-] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 2 weeks ago

the value of a cryptocurrency is based on its perceived value. Perceived value is based on market activity. If I keep sending money to myself it just shows up as market activity, with nobody being able to tell i sent money to myself.

gdp works this way too btw. I sell you $1 worth of stuff, you sell me $1 of stuff, nobody is any richer but gdp went up by $2. Except we can filter this kind of abuse out because it's not anonymous.

But GDP is not the price of an asset, it's a metric to measure the economic activity.

Is it really that hard to understand? The price is dictated by markets... Like with stock and other speculative assets. It's a little bit wilder, possibly due to anonymity and wild promotion on various platforms (like youtube) etc. But in it's essence it's still a market...

[-] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

the price of an asset (when the asset is the currency itself) is based on its economic activity. You said so yourself. The price is dictated by markets. By how much is bought and sold on markets. That is the definition of economic activity. Which part of that do you not understand?

Well you brought GDP as argument, which just doesn't have anything to do with the price of an asset. If you sell a lot and buy a lot GDP grows, but the price of that asset can still be the same at the end.

Getting back to your initial argument:

Since anonymity is a feature, any transactions will increase its value due to it being “used” more

This is just plain wrong, as I could just make myself rich according to that logic... I still need to have that FIAT-money, need to exchange it (in which case I have driven the price up), but now I have less FIAT, so either I have more FIAT to further drive the price, or well I need to cash out in which case I'll drive the price down. If I just send crypto from one (anonymous) account to another it just does... nothing to the price...

[-] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 weeks ago

people don't use bitcoin to pay for other stuff. people buy and sell bitcoin itself. The currency is the asset.

people don't use bitcoin to pay for other stuff.

That isn't true, it is used albeit of course more for speculation, than FIAT.

The currency is the asset.

Guess what, FIAT money like the dollar and euro are also assets, and the same is true for that as well. Though Inflation is usually controlled by central banks.

[-] vga@sopuli.xyz 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Fuck, I just looked at this yesterday and thought why not put a few monies in. And then went to sleep without doing anything.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Not doing something to help Trump just to enrich yourself is the ethical option.

[-] vga@sopuli.xyz 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

There's that, but then again if I would have had managed to exit before the crash (which apparently already somewhat happened) I would've been practically stealing money from some MAGAs. But probably only those MAGAs who least deserve to be stolen from. The actual demons know exactly when to exit and are only going to profit from this.

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[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago

I'm sure that's the first payment of the bribes from Russia and Saudis. Untraceable and the plausible irrationality of buying memecoins deflects questions.

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this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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