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AMY GOODMAN: Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley are calling for a federal investigation into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, after a fund backed by Abu Dhabi announced it would make a $2 billion investment in crypto exchange Binance using a Trump-branded cryptocoin. The deal could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family.
In their letter, Senators Warren and Merkley wrote, quote, “The deal, if completed, would represent a staggering conflict of interest, one that may violate the Constitution and open our government to a startling degree of foreign influence and the potential for a quid pro quo that could endanger national security,” unquote.
Senator Warren also released this video last week blasting the deal.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: The United States is getting ready to bless Donald Trump’s latest grift. A shady Abu Dhabi investment firm just announced it’s going to make a $2 billion business deal with a foreign crypto company called Binance. So, here’s the kicker: Binance and the foreign investment firm are going to use Donald Trump’s stablecoin to finance their transaction, essentially giving Trump a cut of that $2 billion deal. Boy, looks like corruption, smells like corruption. So, yeah, the Senate is going to put a stop to it, right? Wrong. Right now the Senate is getting ready to greenlight the grift by passing the so-called GENIUS Act next week. This is a bill that would make it even easier for the president and his family to profit off their own stablecoin and oversee their own financial company.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump is headed to the Gulf next week.
In related news, last night, on Monday, President Trump spoke at a crypto and AI innovators’ dinner to raise money for a pro-Trump super PAC. Tickets were one-and-a-half million dollars a plate. The event was held at the president’s golf club in Virginia. The co-host of the dinner was David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar. Sacks is a South African-born tech investor who was part of the so-called PayPal Mafia, founding PayPal with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.
On May 22nd, Trump is also hosting a private gala dinner for the top 220 investors in his meme coin. The dinner will also be held at the Trump National Golf Club. The promotion also offers an ultra-exclusive VIP reception with the president and a tour of the White House for the top 25 $TRUMP meme coin investors. The anti-corruption group CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the promotion, quote, “one of the most blatant and appalling instances of selling access to the presidency we’ve ever seen,” they said.
We’re joined now by Molly White, an independent cryptocurrency researcher who runs the Citation Needed newsletter. She recently wrote an article headlined “Trump’s newest grift: Building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators.”
Molly, welcome to Democracy Now! If you can start off, for folks who aren’t following cryptocurrency that carefully, explain what cryptocurrency is.
MOLLY WHITE: Cryptocurrency is a digital asset. So, it’s an entirely digital form of speculation, essentially, that allows people to speculate on the value of tokens that are, you know, things like bitcoin or Ethereum, and it’s entirely digital. There is no physical representation. There is no physical asset or service backing the tokens.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in your recent piece, Molly, you wrote that “The scope of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency conflicts illustrates a degree of corruption that makes the emoluments concerns of Trump’s first term seem quaint by comparison.” Could you explain?
MOLLY WHITE: Yeah. So, Trump’s crypto ventures are growing, seemingly by the week. It seems like every week something new is announced, whether it’s his World Liberty Financial crypto platform or his $TRUMP meme coin or rumors of a new crypto game that his backers are working on. And so, he is really allowing for bribery and the types of corruption that we’ve never seen in the American presidency. You know, he’s allowing people to send him money. He is profiting directly from the cryptocurrency industry, while he is simultaneous influencing policy, legislation, calling off regulators who previously oversaw the crypto industry, in ways that are benefiting him and his family very directly.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And given the fact that cryptocurrency has become sort of the favored money-laundering method of criminals, drug dealers, anybody who wants to hide their money, what is the impact of the growing size of the crypto industry in terms of the financial system?
MOLLY WHITE: Well, it’s definitely concerning. I mean, there is this major potential for criminal activity using cryptocurrencies. We’ve seen it dramatically increase for use in money laundering, as you mention, terrorist financing. Ransomware is primarily these days done with cryptocurrency. And there’s very little in the way of regulations or laws that crack down on that type of activity.
And under the Trump administration, we’ve actually seen what few regulations were in place be pared back. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which previously was, essentially, the primary regulator of the cryptocurrency industry, has been called off the beat. We’ve seen cases against cryptocurrency companies dismissed with prejudice, investigations of crypto companies dropped. We’ve seen the cryptocurrency investigations teams at the SEC and the Department of Justice dismantled. And so, under the Trump administration, I think we are seeing dramatic expansion of the potential for criminal activity within cryptocurrency, as well as the, you know, complete reduction in consumer protections that would allow those who choose to get involved with cryptocurrency to do so without the fear that they are going to be scammed or taken advantage of.
AMY GOODMAN: Molly, how exactly does Trump and his family profit from these crypto ventures? How much money are we talking about? And explain. Trump has a crypto coin. Melania has one. Explain how this works.
MOLLY WHITE: Well, Trump has multiple crypto ventures that are directly enriching him. So, you mentioned there’s the $TRUMP meme coin, which is the token that is themed after him, essentially, and is being currently used as a ticket to this private dinner at his golf course. Melania has a token of her own. And the Trumps make money off of those tokens, both in terms of the trading that’s happening, as well as facilitating the liquidity for those types of tokens.
Then there’s the World Liberty Financial platform, which is a yet-to-be-released crypto platform that is nevertheless selling these World Liberty Financial tokens to interested buyers. Trump makes 75% of the protocol revenues from that project, and he owns a 60% stake in the company. He and his family sort of maintained the illusion that there was an arm’s-length relationship between the project, despite it being entirely themed after Trump, prior to his election and inauguration, but after he was inaugurated, they sort of gave up that facade and obtained a majority stake in the company.
And then, Trump has sort of an endless list of additional crypto ventures. He has his NFT projects. He has sold crypto-themed sneakers. You know, there has been reporting that he is working on a crypto game. His Trump Media & Technology Group, which is the company that is behind the Truth Social platform that he controls, is also getting into crypto with a partnership with Crypto.com to launch crypto ETFs, exchange-traded funds. And there’s also reporting that they are considering launching their own token. So, the list really goes on.
And so far, I think he has raised close to a billion dollars, or he has profited in close to a billion dollars from his combined ventures. That number is only continuing to increase, as there are deals like this stablecoin being used by the United Arab Emirates Investment Fund, and as, you know, multiple new ventures are being launched as we go on.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, the Trump administration has claimed that all of Trump’s investments are in a blind trust, that basically his sons run the company, not him.
MOLLY WHITE: Right, that is the claim, although he’s made varying claims. He’s even claimed not to profit from crypto at all, which is plainly untrue. But I think that, you know, frankly, it is not fair to say that he is divested from crypto ventures when it is controlled by his sons. His sons are profiting, and ultimately he is profiting. You know, he should not be making policy decisions or influencing policy in ways that benefit his family quite, quite plainly. And I don’t think that the claims that he has divested are accurate whatsoever.
AMY GOODMAN: Molly White, can you talk about the latest push by the Senate Democrats? Tell us more about the legislation that they want to change on cryptocurrency pending in Congress. What did the so-called GENIUS Act, a bill backed by the crypto industry, call for?
MOLLY WHITE: So, the GENIUS Act is primarily intended to regulate stablecoins, which are a category of crypto assets that are intended to maintain a peg to some other form of asset. So, we often see dollar stablecoins, which are crypto tokens that are intended to be worth $1 a piece. Those are assets like USDC or Trump’s USD1 stablecoin, which was recently launched. And the GENIUS Act, you know, seeks to install some amount of legislation that would regulate those types of assets.
And this is something that we’ve seen the crypto industry pushing for for quite some time, even prior to the Trump administration. But Trump’s own crypto ventures, including launching his own stablecoin, have recently stalled that legislation, with a number of Senate Democrats speaking up to oppose this bill, as well as those in the House, signaling that, you know, the Trump family financial interests are a major concern for them. The crypto industry has also pushed for a number of changes to this bill that would benefit the industry. And we’re now starting to see Democrats in Congress saying that this bill does not go far enough to prevent national security concerns or even terrorist financing using these stablecoins, which have been used to transfer massive amounts of funds. They are sort of the bedrock of the crypto industry, almost like the poker chips at the casino. Stablecoins are a major venue through which value is transferred in the crypto world. And so, this type of legislation is extremely important to get right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Do we have any sense of who in the United States does this investing in crypto coins? How widespread is it? Or is there a profile of typical people who are buying the coins?
MOLLY WHITE: Well, there are everyday people who are involved in crypto speculation, but we also see major venture capital firms and investment firms getting involved in the crypto world, as well, including a number that have a significant presence in Washington. Andreessen Horowitz, for example, is one of the largest technology venture capital firms. They have significant investments in the cryptocurrency world, and a number of Andreessen Horowitz employees have been installed in various positions at the White House. Marc Andreessen himself was involved in selecting members of the Trump administration, and they were very heavily involved in political campaigning. Then there are figures like David Sacks, who is the AI and crypto czar at the White House. He runs an investment firm that also has crypto investments, some of which he’s not divested from.
So, there are multiple profiles of crypto investors, many of them institutional, but also everyday people who have bought the story that cryptocurrency is a way to get ahead financially, that crypto investments can potentially provide high returns and are worth the enormous risk and volatility that crypto brings with it, and, you know, now the enormous risk of fraud and collapse throughout the crypto industry, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Molly White, we want to thank you so much for being with us, software engineer, independent cryptocurrency researcher, running the Citation Needed newsletter. We’ll link to your recent piece, “Trump’s newest grift: Building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators.”
Coming up, the Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha. He left Gaza December 2023. He came to Syracuse University. On Monday, he won a Pulitzer Prize. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: Roger Waters performing “We Shall Overcome” in our studio, accompanied by Alexander Rohatyn on cello.
