Trump & Crypto: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

We're actually gonna dive straight in with our main story this week, which concerns Donald Trump, a man who, offense very much meant, looks like he is slowly turning into Mrs. Doubtfire.Specifically, we're gonna look at something Trump's dedicated a lot of attention to over the last few years, crypto.He's even called himself the first crypto president, which is a pretty big turnaround, given that just five years ago, he not only called Bitcoin a scam, he was also giving interviews like this.Do you ever dabble in Bitcoin or cryptos?

I don't.The currency of the United States, I think it's, you know, I think the others are potentially a disaster waiting to happen.I don't know.I don't, I feel that it hurts the United States currency.I think we should strengthen, we should be invested in our currency, not in, they may be fake, who knows what they are.

Yeah, Trump was not a big fan of cryptos back then, and that conversation is basically what you would expect from two septuagenarians talking about Bitcoin.It has the same vibe of cranky befuddlement as Statler asking Waldorf what he thinks of ethical non -monogamy.Stu Varney, in particular, there, sounds like a grandpa desperately trying to find something to talk about with his teenage grandson.So, you're dabbling the cryptos?Are you on the TikToks?I saw on the evening news that Charlie Darmadillo is pretty popular right now.

Please just say anything to me. I'm gonna be dead in five years.But since then, Trump's had a pretty significant change of heart, to the point that in 2024, he delivered the keynote at a Bitcoin convention where he said this.

Those who say that Bitcoin is a threat to the dollar have the story exactly backwards.I believe it is exactly backwards.This afternoon I'm laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world.and we'll get it done.If Bitcoin is going to the moon, as we say, is going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way, and that's what's going to happen.

Now, if you are not a crypto person, going to the moon is a catchphrase in that world, which is a little weird, as I always assumed the official catchphrase for crypto was, a first date conversation's worst nightmare.And while there are several possible explanations for why Trump made such a 180 on crypto, including that he saw an industry willing to spend a shitload to help him get elected, I'd argue the biggest one is probably that Trump realized just how much money he personally could end up making from dealing with a speculative asset, because it's turned out to be a lot.His recent financial findings show that in just his first year back in office, his personal income surged to more than 2 .2 billion, most of which came from his family's crypto businesses, which brought in about 1 .4 billion.In fact, crypto's become the Trump family's dominant business interest, overshadowing their real estate empire and every other business they have ever had.And as this ethics attorney explains, there is a crucial difference between crypto and all Trump's other ventures.

President Trump has sold steaks.He sold gold sneakers, Bibles.How is this any different?

At least those had some intrinsic value.This is like a perfect vehicle to funnel money to him and his family to enrich them.

Although personally, I do take issue with the idea that the Trump steak or sneakers held any intrinsic value.Because if, gun to my head, I had to eat one and wear the other on my foot, I'm picking shoe for food and steak for shoe.As for Trump's Bibles, I'll just point out that the website that sold them had a question on their FAQ that said, what if my Bible has sticky pages?Which could only get more off -putting if the answer is yes.was just, blame Craig.So, given all of that, tonight, let's talk about Trump, his crypto holdings, and what they mean for all of us.

And right off the bat, I should say Trump and his family have a truly absurd number of crypto -related ventures involved in all sorts of business deals.To the point that those who've tried keeping track of them have wound up making diagrams like this.which looks so intricate, it's like someone tried to map out all the relationships on Vanderpump Rules.Say, a solid line is dating, a dashed line is exes, and a dotted line is hand stuff.And don't worry, we are not going to talk about all the Trump family's crypto involvements.For instance, I will spare you the details about Eric Trump's Bitcoin mining company, except to show you this clip of him explaining the brilliant way he helped his partners come up with its name.

Never forget saying to them, listen, it's gotta have two words in it.It has to have America, and it has to have Bitcoin.And one of the two guys said, listen, Eric, American Bitcoin, that's got to be the name.Holy shit, Eric.

That is so smart.I mean, if I were naming an American Bitcoin company, I'd have probably said the words you had to use were Albania and giraffe.But I guess that's why I'm not a business genius like Eric Trump is.Instead, I'm gonna focus on just two of the Trump family's major crypto ventures, and I'll describe them the way I'm pretty sure he describes his oldest son.Specifically, the big one and the dumb one.And let's start with the dumb one, Trump's meme coins.

Meme coins are basically just online jokes converted into digital money, which are worth only what people are willing to pay for them.You're probably aware of meme coins like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Fartcoin, a name I'm honestly shocked Eric Trump didn't come up with.I'll never forget saying, listen, it's got to have two words in it.It has to have fart, and it has to have coin.And they said, Eric, Fartcoin, that's got to be the name.And as this analyst points out, the whole value of a meme coin is built on its novelty.

It is a coin that means nothing.It is like buying a pet rock, except you don't even get a rock.It has no value.It has no trading value.It's not used in commerce, nothing.

Right, although at the same time, let's try and put some respect on the pet rock's name.It was the idea of Gary Dahl, who sold enough to become a millionaire in the 70s in basically one year.He bought a bunch of smooth rocks from a builder's supply store in Mexico for a penny a piece, and he sold them for around $4, which in today's money is $25.And just think about that.Two years after an oil crisis, and in the midst of a recession, this guy convinced a bunch of, I can only assume, coked -out lunatics... to pay the equivalent of multiple hours of their wages to buy a pet rock.Then, Gary cashed out and fucked off into the horizon.

Nothing has touched the marketing brilliance of the pet rock.In fact, everyone in this audience, look under your seats right now, because you will find, I'm just kidding, I'm kidding, P .O.doesn't have rock money anymore.Are you crazy?The point is..

.Most meme coins, seemingly by design, basically follow the trajectory of pump and dump schemes.They spike in value when they first come out and then immediately crash, with insiders selling at the peak.And in Trump's case, just three days before his second inauguration, he launched the Trump meme coin in a social media post where he told everyone to have fun.Two days later, on the eve of the inauguration, Melania launched her own meme coin with this social media post, which looks like she's dropping an album of Adele covers.And while it is by no means the worst part, maybe they should have workshopped the name of her coin a bit more so that it doesn't read as Smelania.

Anyway, anyway, when Trump's coin first launched, many in the crypto community genuinely couldn't believe it.

It was one of the craziest nights I've ever experienced in crypto, ever.Like, it was nuts.because no one believed that it was real.Everyone thought it was a scam.Everyone thought that his account was hacked.

Okay, but as far as Trump's account getting hacked, how could you even tell?Remember, this is a man who has posted this depiction of himself taking a selfie with a lion.This one of him is the anime character Naruto.And this one of him walking with a distractingly ripped alien in handcuffs.Honestly, the only thing that would make me think Trump might have been hacked is if he suddenly posted a normal, coherent sentence without any randomly capitalized words.And unsurprisingly, the Trump coins then did exactly what meme coins tend to do.

They initially skyrocketed in valuation, soaring so high that for a few hours, the Trumps and their business partners were sitting on at least $50 billion worth of it.But then inevitably, they crashed and hard.In fact, by the following December, Trump's coin was down 92 percent since its peak, while Smelania was down 99 percent.Almost a complete wipeout in value.But Trump himself... walked away with a $636 million payout.And one of the weirder interludes in his coins journey actually came last year when Trump managed to briefly juice his coins value up a bit by holding an intimate private dinner for its 220 top holders.

And in doing so, he was basically offering access to the White House in exchange for an investment in one of his crypto ventures.A former special counsel to Obama even called the dinner an ethics nightmare.Though some of the attendees, like this guy, who had roughly half a million dollars tied up in the Trump coin, did leave feeling a little scammed.

Going into this dinner, I was hoping to at least get a picture with Trump or actually do TikTok, so I was hoping to maybe do a trend or some short video with him, maybe like 15 seconds.It's not gonna take much of his time.

I just got to the Trump dinner.Trump came, gave a speech for, I think, exactly 23 minutes, and then he left.His helicopter was right back there, left the room,

I think you already know this, but he didn't come back.And I'm honestly racking my brain right now trying to find a single ounce of sympathy for someone who purchased a bunch of Trump's meme coin to attend it in a where his main goal was to, and I quote, do a TikTok with Trump.But I've got nothing.I refuse to feel sadness for someone who has seemingly chosen to sit in a Lamborghini dealership and dress themselves like the second coming of Limp Bizkit.I can't do it.I can't do it.

But while that dinner may have been a bust for those who attended it, shortly after it was announced, the Trump coin jumped approximately 30%.And look, we don't know if Trump sold any coins during that bump, or indeed, if anyone involved with it did.But the very fact we don't know is part of the problem here.Because it clearly doesn't look good for a president to be involved in something like that.Jimmy Carter famously chose to put his peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid perceived conflicts of interest.And it is a little weird that to go by Trump's standards, if he just invented his own novelty currency instead called Jimbo's Nut Bucks, people would have probably been fine with it.

And it is worth remembering, while Trump personally made hundreds of millions of dollars with this nonsense, people got hurt.Nearly a million people who bought into the coin lost money, with their losses totaling over 3 .8 billion.And while one of them was this guy, so you can't be 100 % mad, it is still pretty shitty.But Trump's meme coin is just the tip of the iceberg here, which actually brings us to his family's biggest crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, the business that Trump and his sons co -founded and announced just weeks before the last election.And unsurprisingly, his sons once again brought their incredible business acumen to name day.company.

We call it World Liberty because of the liberty aspect of it, but also because of the world aspect of it, right?Yeah, yeah.You know, that's such a good point, isn't it?It's called World Liberty Financial because of the liberty aspect, but also the world aspect.And no, don't forget the financial aspect, too.It really is the perfect combination of aspects.

Now, we briefly touched on World Liberty shortly after it launched in our segment on Trump's businesses, pointing out that its co -founders include the human Axe body spray cans, Zach Folkman and Chase Hero.If you didn't see that segment, just know Folkman used to teach cringe -inducing classes on how to pick up women called Date Hotter Girls.And Hero has described himself as the Dirtbag of the Internet and was described crypto like this.

You can literally sell sh... in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story's right.Because people will buy it, and that is what is going on in the crypto space.And like I said by the video, I'm not gonna question the right and wrong of all that.All I'm saying is, as a human being, you have the ability to make a f... ton of money right now.Okay.

There are a lot of things that I want to say about that, but first and foremost, now is not the time to be talking with your hands, Chase.Let's put them at ten and two, you Ed Hardy nightmare.Now, since launching World Liberty Financial, the Trumps have raked in huge amounts of money, meaning that that one company is now worth more to their family than any other business, including their stake in Trump Media and even Mar -a -Lago.And they've achieved this by giving people a number of different ways to buy in.The first is through purchasing the company's token.It's a so -called governance token, so owning it typically doesn't give you any stake in the company, it just allows you to vote on how the platform operates.

And for this particular token, 75 % of the proceeds flow directly to the Trumps as a fee.And if you are thinkingthat that sounds like a really easy way to send money to Trump to try and curry favor with him, you'd be right about that.Take Justin's son.He spent $75 million buying those governance tokens, which, on one level, probably shouldn't be surprising, given he seems to have a habit of buying some very dumb shit.

Another investor is Justin Sun, the eccentric Chinese billionaire, perhaps best known for buying...

It's yours.Congratulations.Thank you very much indeed.

And then eating a $6 .2 million banana duct -taped to a wall.

Look, I'm not gonna say whether that banana was actually worth $6 .2 million or not.I am not an art appraiser.I just have the bitchy attitude of one.The point is, that is the guy who spent $75 million on World Liberty governance tokens, as well as, by the way, spending nearly $38 million on Trump's meme coin.And while that all sounds very stupid, because in every important way, it really is...

But it may not actually have been a complete waste of money for Sun, because it turns out, at the time Trump took office, he was actually fighting a lawsuit from the SEC, alleging he defrauded investors by manipulating the price of his Tron cryptocurrency with fake trades.Fun fact, Tron also allegedly hosted 45 % of all illicit crypto money flows in 2023.And while Tron insists that it is taking steps to prevent criminals from using its technology for illegal activity, you have to admit, It is still pretty impressive that, against all odds, it turns out that the worst Tron is now somehow no longer the one starring Jared Leto.Actually, just after Sun began plowing all that money into Trump's crypto ventures, the SEC suddenly paused its case against him.And then, in March, this happened.

The government's settling a fraud case against a crypto billionaire, Justin Sun.The SEC saying that one of Sun's firmsnow gonna pay $10 million in a penalty, uh, but will neither, uh, neither of the companies will admit wrongdoing.

Wow, to put that $10 million fine in terms that we can now all understand, that is 1 .6 bananas taped to a wall.Now, Justin Sun has denied there was any quid pro quo there, but the thing is, that sequence of events where someone helps World Liberty Financial make money, and then coincidentally, get something that they wanted all along, is by no means a one -off.Because a similar sequence of events took place with the company's so -called stablecoin, USD1.Now, unlike meme coins, the price of which can fluctuate wildly, a stablecoin is supposed to have a set monetary value.So basically, one coin should always be worth one dollar.And this can be lucrative for companies like World Liberty, because when someone uses real money to buy a stable coin, it can then invest that money into treasuries and earn interest on it.

That is why it was very good news for Trump that, as we've discussed before, the founder of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, facilitated a massive $2 billion purchase of USD1 by an investment fund tied to the United Arab Emirates.Now, at the time, by sheer coincidence, he made that purchase.was pursuing a presidential pardon for a money laundering conviction, which he eventually got.And while Binance and its founder will insist that they did nothing wrong, the fact is that $2 billion transaction was absolutely huge for world liberty because, as crypto experts will point out, it instantly made their stablecoin seem much more legit.

So it took world liberty from being a small project that maybe was on the roadmap after the election purely for the name, to being one of the largest stable coins in the world in a single transaction.So it vaulted them from small time to the big leagues.

Right.And it sure seems like that was due to the Trump connection, because I'm not sure why else anyone would put two billion dollars worth of trust in a company founded by the dirtbag of the internet, a walking restraining order, and two brothers who probably lost their shit over the name Cheeseballs.Wait, they're balls, and they taste like cheese.It's fucking genius.But that was only part of the story, because as I said, the entity that actually put up the two billion dollars was an investment firm linked to the government of the UAE.A government, incidentally, that very much wanted to get its hands on advanced computer chips made by U .

S.companies.Now, the Biden administration had largely stymied that deal over fears that giving chips to the UAE could ultimately lead to them getting to China.But you will never guess what happened not long after that crypto deal went through.

Two weeks after the $2 billion transaction, President Trump travelled to the UAE for an official visit.

Yesterday, the two countries also agreed to create a path for UAE to buy some of the world's most advanced AI semiconductors from American companies, a very big contract.

The US then announced it would allow the UAE to buy hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA's advanced AI chips.While there's no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other, the timing is extraordinary.

Sure, let's go with extraordinary.It's not the word that I would use, but it turns out my lawyers tell me that the word that I actually want to use would cost HBO a few million in legal fees, so extraordinary it is then.That may not even be the most important link between the UAE and World Liberty Financial because it later emerged that another transaction had quietly happened right before Trump came back into office.

Just days before Trump's second inauguration, the Journal reports 49%, nearly half of the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, was purchased for $500 million by Sheikh Tanun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who heads the United Arab Emirates State Investment Fund and serves as national security advisor, sometimes referred to as the spy sheikh.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, the guy at the center of all of this is apparently called the spy sheikh.Which frankly isn't great given that Spy Shake sounds like the title of a culturally insensitive 90s thriller starring Steven Seagal.The Spy Sheikh is the brother of UAE's president, and he got that nickname because he spent the last decade as the country's national security advisor.Even at one point, becoming embroiled in a spying scandal when it emerged that operatives hired by the Emirates were targeting human rights activists, including one whose baby monitor they hacked to spy on his family.Which sure seems like the sort of thing you would want to know before releasing, I don't know, high -powered computer chips to a country.Although, for what it's worth, hacking a baby monitor for spying also doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

No one is discussing their political activist plans while putting their baby to bed.If a parent is saying anything, it is whispering over and over again, I will pay you $1 ,000 to go to sleep right now.But because World Liberty is a private company, we didn't even find out about that investment until The Wall Street Journal reported it earlier this year, even though that deal involves a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U .S.president's company and steering, at a minimum, $187 million to the president's family.That is literally unprecedented in American politics.

Now, I have to say, World Liberty insists the company has no role in or influence on government policy, and the White House told us that the president only acts in the best interest of the American public, and there are no conflicts of interest, which, huge for this country, if true.Trump has insisted he does not control his crypto investments, and in fact, he barely pays attention to them.

Well, I don't know about it.

I know that crypto is a big thing, and they like it.A lot of people like it.The people behind me like it.My sons are handling that.My family is handling it.And, uh, I guess they get investments from different people.

Oh, come the fuck on.In most cases, I am willing to believe that Trump doesn't talk to his sons, especially considering his wedding present to Don Jr. was apparently to not show up.But if there is anything that binds the three of these men together, it's loving money and having the beady eyes of a builder bear that's been banned from entering Victoria's Secret.So...When a deal comes up that will put tens of millions of dollars in their pockets, it is really hard for me to believe that Trump is unaware of it.The point here is, it sure seems like Trump's exploiting crypto sketchiness for maximum profit.

And importantly, at the same time, he's now making it much easier for others to do the same.We've shown you this clip before, but at that Bitcoin conference, the biggest cheer Trump got came when he promised to fire the then head of the SEC, who was seen to be too tough on crypto.

On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman.

I got to say, thank goodness he only said that twice, because the way that response escalated, if he'd said, I will fire Gary Gensler a third time, he'd have floated out of that room on a river of karma.Seeing the writing on the wall stepped down on Trump's first day back in office, and in his place, Trump appointed the very pro -crypto Paul Atkins, and it is notable.that when the Times looked into it, it found the SEC had eased up on more than 60 % of the crypto cases that were ongoing when Trump returned.to the White House, moving to pause litigation, lessen penalties, or outright dismiss the cases.And this administration is now trying to lock in that lax regulatory environment for the foreseeable future.Because they, along with the crypto industry, are currently making a hard push for a sweeping crypto bill called the Clarity Act, that would fundamentally reorder how crypto is regulated, largely shifting it out of the purview of the SEC, whose core mission includes protecting investors, and giving that authority instead to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a short -staffed federal agency with limited enforcement capacity and no explicit mandate to protect investors.

And if the Clarity Act passes, the changes could be hard to undo.One executive of a crypto trade group has even said, it gets really hard for the next administration, whether it's Republican or Democrat, to really change too much about it.And that should be worrying here, especially given that nothing in the latest draft of the Clarity Act would prevent Trump from continuing to profit from his meme coin or other crypto ventures.And look, I know you might be saying, why does any of this matter to me?I've been trying so hard to avoid thinking about or dealing with crypto right up until this point in my life.But that is actually sort of the problem here.

Because if these conflicts of interest were as easy to understand as something like Jimmy Carter and his peanut farm, I think there'd be a lot more alarm about just how flagrantly corrupt and compromised Trump looks here.That is why we badly need proper guardrails going forward.But the Clarity Act is just not the answer.And until we find a better one, maybe just assume that if you see the Trump family engaging in the future in a major crypto deal, probably with an embarrassingly unimaginative name.Some shady shit is likely going down.Because if after hearing all this, you truly believe that everyone funneling money to Trump through crypto, including the spy sheik, expects nothing in return and is just making a sound, rational business decision, then frankly, I have got a $6 .2 million banana that I would like to sell you.