As President Donald Trump is betting his claims about the future of American cryptocurrency, investors and industry insiders are split over whether his administration is truly marking a turning point for digital assets.
Kevin O'Leary Ventures Chairman and longtime cryptocurrency advocate Kevin O'Leary recently praised Trump's stance on digital assets, claiming that the administration is leading a “new stage” in the industry.
Speaking about “my views with Lara Trump,” O'Leary argued that the so-called “crypto cowboy era” (marked by famous fraud cases and regulatory uncertainty) has ended.
Remember that O'Leary was actually affected by FTX, perhaps the biggest crypto fraud case of all. As an exchange investor and spokesman, O'Leary lost a significant amount of money in late 2022 when the Sambankmanfried startup went bankrupt.
“All the code cowboys are prisons or out of business, so now we're in a new stage. There's a new tone in the government. Trump has moved that forward,” O'Leary said.
However, rug pulling and catastrophic hacking are still common.
Meanwhile, crypto “whales” and influencers pump coins with fake “insider knowledge” and inflate prices before they can win cash, killing each day investors for holding their bags. It is the wild west there, and the con man rides high.
O'Leary's optimism comes as Trump is embarking on new crypto initiatives one after another.
After speaking at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, the then-candidate Gop launched World Liberty Financial. Two days before he took office, he announced the official Trump (Trump) meme coin. And are all these SEC-led research into cryptocurrency companies (i.e. Binance, Coinbase)? They're gone.
Earlier this month, Trump signed an executive order establishing a strategic Bitcoin sanctuary. The move, which designated certain digital assets such as XRP, SOL and ADA as part of the Government-Assisted Strategic Reserve, has been touted by Trump and his allies as a major step towards integrating crypto into traditional finance.
O'Leary praises these developments as evidence of a turning point in regulation, but not everyone in the crypto world is convinced.
“This isn't that.”
Critics argue that Trump's new embrace of digital assets will undermine the industry's credibility and pave the way for Croney capitalism.
“Crypto is an existential moment,” warned Zack Guzmán, a Crypto journalist and founder of Trustless Media, a web3 media company, on January 18th. I understand the short-term excitement of thinking. I understand the stand [sic] Why would Trump easily win the industry by a man who varnished every way to make money for himself? But this is not the case. ”
Only politically supported crypto companies will thrive under government protection, Guzman said.
On the same day, Trump decided to launch Memocoin, which has skyrocketed by 10,000%. Crypto elitists are ready to wear tuxedos and gowns and get ready to have their hob knobs at the Washington DC gala.
“I'm not saying that Trump used everyone in Crypto by throwing a black tie event in DC, but at the same time launching Memocoin without them, and that's exactly what he did,” Guzman wrote on January 18th. Frankly, that's very sad. ”
“Silly and embarrassing”
After Trump launched the official Trump, cryptocurrency investor Balaji Srinivasan was called Meme Coin and “Zero Sum Game.”
“There's no creation of wealth,” he tweeted the day before Trump took office. “All buy orders are matched simply by sell orders. And after the first spike, the price will eventually crash and the last buyer loses everything.”
Crypto entrepreneur Erik Voorhees wrote about X:
Playing coins are stupid and embarrassing. Trump Coin is a signal of the oceanic change in US fintech policies towards far more tolerant innovation. Both are true.
Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of Skybridge and former White House communications director, calls it “Idi Amin level corruption,” referring to military officers whose rule in Uganda in the 1970s was defined by corruption.
And that Bitcoin reserve – Trump's Crypto Emperor, David's saxophone, says it will be filled with seized digital assets – also appears to have been very accused. Crypto analyst Dessislava Aubert told Agence France-Presse that the US government must return the seized Bitcoin to all victims identified as suffering from the hack.
Despite skepticism, O'Leary remains immovable in his belief that Trump's policies would legalize codes in ways that were not in the previous administration.
“The big news is that this will be the first administration that says this sector belongs to the US. Development should be here. This technology needs to be mastered here, O'Leary added.
Whether Trump's promises lead to lasting clarity of regulations or simply political grandiose reveals an open question. For now, the world of cryptography is closely watched and caught up in between hope and deep doubt.
