Donald Trump and Bitcoin: From 'Not a Fan' to Crypto President

Bitcoin-friendly Donald Trump won became once inaugurated in January as the 47th President of the United States of The USA. But earlier than being formally sworn in, the commander in chief dropped a meme coin.

Yes, you read that supreme. Operating on the Solana network, the TRUMP token at one level had a market cap of $14 billion. It’s since plunged to $1.5 billion, however the circulate signaled the contemporary President’s growing enthusiasm for the digital asset dwelling after campaigning to abet Bitcoiners and the fleet-energetic sphere as a entire.

Trump branded himself as a crypto-friendly candidate earlier than November’s divisive election, bringing in millions of greenbacks in money and digital asset donations from Silicon Valley tech leaders. After which he won.

But it wasn’t repeatedly worship this: President Trump became once once a staunch crypto critic. So how did we salvage here?

Trump’s most defining early touch upon cryptocurrency dates motivate to 2019, when as president he made it obvious he didn’t worship Bitcoin.

“I’m no longer partial to Bitcoin and different cryptocurrencies, that are no longer money, and whose price is extremely volatile and in accordance with skinny air,” he said on Twitter on the time, earlier than slamming Facebook’s plans for a digital foreign money.

“We possess only one staunch foreign money in the United States, and it is stronger than ever, every trusty and decent,” he added. “It is by a long way the most dominant foreign money wherever in the field, and it ought to continually preserve that scheme. It is known as the United States dollar!”

Trump reiterated his beliefs for the length of a Bitcoin bull bustle in 2021. “Bitcoin valid looks worship a scam,” he said on Fox Commercial, repeating that he wanted the dollar to be the field’s high foreign money.

Getting into the NFT world

It took a truly lengthy time for him to explicitly inform he preferred the high cryptocurrency, and the dawdle started with an no longer going crypto craze: NFT collectibles.

By the high of 2021, after Trump had left the White Home, his partner Melania announced her plans for a Solana-basically based mostly NFT series. Solana Labs clarified that it had nothing to attach with the series launching on the blockchain, and Trump continued to slam crypto as “awful” in spite of his partner’s mission.

The next three hundred and sixty five days, alternatively, the commander-in-chief launched his like NFT series. Minted on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, the digital trading card series became once initially ridiculed—alternatively it quiet supplied out quick and made millions of greenbacks.

Trump later said that he only launched the series because he concept they had been “invent of cute.” He has since launched extra collections on Polygon, and even minted one of the most third scheme on Bitcoin by potential of the Ordinals protocol. A fourth series launched in August 2024 with the excellent different of NFTs to this level, though no longer as a lot as 10% of the on hand entire became once in the slay minted.

Trump has even claimed that the success of his NFT collections, and the ugly different of investors who typical cryptocurrency in preference to fiat foreign money, helped alternate his perspective on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

A digital wallet tied to the President by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence displays that he has raked in millions in royalties from the NFTs—and likewise holds one of the most excellent unofficial Trump meme money, which seemingly had been sent to the wallet without Trump’s files or consent.

Trump’s crypto embrace

But it became once valid closing three hundred and sixty five days when Trump with out a doubt upped the pro-crypto discuss. “I create money with it, I with out a doubt possess relaxing with it too,” Trump said in a March 2024 interview with CNBC’s Boom Box. “Crazy contemporary currencies, that’s what I call them.”

Then, while hosting holders of his NFTs at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Could possibly per chance also 2024, he told the crowd he became once “appropriate with” crypto—and slammed Biden and the Democrats for being “in opposition to it.” Many saw the tournament as a turning level in crypto policy conversations.

Rumors spread that month that the field’s richest man and excellent donor to the Trump campaign, Elon Musk, had been advising the presidential hopeful on a crypto procedure. (Musk denied the studies.) That July, the Republican occasion issued a draft occasion platform that explicitly talked about crypto—a important for the alternate.

After surviving an assassination strive, the alternate prosperous person and outdated fact TV vital person earned Musk’s public endorsement, as smartly as reinforce from many varied renowned names in the digital asset dwelling. And foremost crypto figures worship the Winklevoss twins of Gemini and Kraken founder Jesse Powell donated mammoth sums to Trump.

Trump then chosen Senator J.D. Vance as his decide for operating mate, with the Vice President considered on the time as a pro-crypto candidate who beforehand disclosed Bitcoin holdings of between $100,000 and $250,000 motivate in 2021.

However the most tangible signal of Trump’s growing embrace of crypto got here when he spoke on the 2024 Bitcoin Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. There, he promised the crowd that he would accomplish a “strategic Bitcoin stockpile” for the country and that his opinion became once to flip the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the planet.”

The Trump family then teased a decentralized finance (DeFi) mission dubbed World Liberty Monetary, with Trump himself posting a couple of social media teasers for the length of the initial rollout.

The President’s son Donald Jr. said that the crypto platform will be egalitarian. “For too lengthy, the moderate American has been squeezed by the giant banks and financial elites. Or no longer it is time we grab a stand—together,” he said on Twitter (aka X).

Then, a day after the second strive on his lifestyles, Trump launched the mission for the length of a are residing interview with Rug Radio (Decrypt’s sister company). World Liberty Monetary targets to present borrowing and lending products and services for cryptocurrencies on Ethereum’s network.

As crypto token launches scramble, the mission became once a shrimp of a flop supreme out of the gate, only managing to sell 4% of its allotted tokens for the length of its open. But gross sales ticked up substantially earlier than Trump’s inauguration, with the rest of the piece promoting out on January 20—the day he returned to the White Home. Decrypt then reported that the World Liberty Monetary mission had launched its like stablecoin.

The Republican also has extra crypto other folks on his staff. Bitcoin bull Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign to endorse Trump, after which joined Trump’s transition staff. Now he’s the Secretary of Effectively being and Human Products and services. Orange-pilled Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick is also half of Trump’s political squad, now serving as Secretary of Commerce.

Elsewhere, renowned Dogecoin fan Elon Musk led the Department of Executive Effectivity (DOGE), a program to cut budgets and reduce jobs all over the executive. He has since stepped down from the characteristic amid a messy public damage-up with Trump.

Crypto ambitions develop

Trump closing three hundred and sixty five days turned the predominant fresh or outdated President of the U.S.—that all people knows of—to possess typical Bitcoin to salvage one thing: At the most accepted Fresh York Metropolis crypto bar, PubKey, the ex-President supplied a burger the usage of the cryptocurrency.

“It’s the starting of a up to date expertise,” he said, referring to the digital asset alternate. And it wasn’t valid discuss: On January 17, he launched a meme coin operating on Solana, and the token is now one in every of the most in actual fact handy meme money in existence.

The TRUMP token open has been broadly criticized by politicians and analysts, and is considered by some as a likely avenue for corruption. But while the price is down sharply from the high, it has continued to gaze trading question, including in April when Trump revealed plans to host an uncommon dinner for high TRUMP holders.

Trump’s uncommon dinner—held in Could possibly per chance also for the high 220 holders of the meme coin—became once a quaint tournament, in accordance with attendees who spoke to Decrypt, and the president only made a quick appearance. VIP attendees, who got a different tour alongside salvage entry to to the tournament, held a median of $4.8 million worth of TRUMP to salvage a high express on the occasion.

However the Republican, in his several 5 months in accumulate 22 situation of enterprise, has made different, extra extreme campaign pledges a fact: He established a strategic Bitcoin reserve and turned the predominant president to signal a crypto-connected bill into law—ending the IRS’s so-known as DeFi broker rule, which would possibly additionally possess imperiled the development of crypto apps in The USA.

Trump’s SEC has also scrapped a amount of lawsuits and in opposition to crypto companies from the outdated administration, and his family is persevering with to—albeit controversially—push forward with its like crypto ventures: Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are launched American Bitcoin, a collaboration with Bitcoin mining firm Hut8 that plans to change into the “world’s excellent and most ambiance friendly Bitcoin miner.”

The Trump sons are also planning to open a crypto wallet by potential of their World Liberty Monetary mission. Within the beginning, the TRUMP meme coin staff said it may well possibly possibly per chance possibly open its like Trump-themed wallet, however that opinion became once canceled after a public (however quick-lived) dispute with Eric, Barron, and Don Jr. (The Trump family, interestingly, looks to possess diminished its stake in World Liberty.)

Extra symbolically, Trump and his family possess spoken out in opposition to giant banks and what they assume to be censorship. In an August govt say, the president prohibited the debanking of crypto-connected companies, siding with alternate leaders who’d beforehand complained about being mistreated by the TradFi world.

Trump’s media company Trump Media and Know-how Neighborhood in March also signed an settlement to staff with Crypto.com to present ETFs, with Trump Media itself planning to make investments its like money into the products. The companies possess since teamed as a lot as open a treasury for Crypto.com’s Cronos (CRO) token, which is ready to also be typical all over Trump Media’s Truth Social platforms. On high of all that, Trump Media supplied $2 billion worth of Bitcoin and connected securities in July after elevating billions to attach so.

Trump critics possess argued that the president’s digital asset ventures constitute a battle of interest; Silicon Valley bigwigs inform he’s pro-innovation. One thing is for obvious, though: President Trump has gone all-in on crypto, shrugging off his past perspective on the alternate.

And he’s earned a great deal of followers in the task—some of whom briefly erected a golden statue of Trump holding a Bitcoin in Washington D.C. in September.

Editor’s exclaim: This memoir became once initially published on July 19, 2024 and closing as a lot as this level with contemporary data on October 5, 2025.