Bulwark Takes - Trump’s BIGGEST Grift Yet—We Have RECEIPTS!

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Tim Miller sits down with Molly White to break down how Trump and his allies are cashing in on crypto while gutting the rules meant to protect the public. They dive into shady deals, regulatory rollbacks, and what it all means for your wallet, whether you hold crypto or not.

Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. I am here with somebody that has written, this is no exaggeration, what I think is maybe the most important thing that has been written out there in the last month or two, because people are having trouble wrapping their head around what is happening with Trump and the crypto world, and it is really unprecedented. So her name is Molly White. She has a substack called Citation Needed that you should check out if you're into crypto news. And Molly, how's it going? Thanks for coming. I want to start here. You wrote that that the Trump crypto grift is the most flagrant violation of presidential authority in American history. That might feel like an overstatement, but I'm with you. It is not.

It's not even close to an overstatement because I don't think that there's a close second. But why don't you kind of explain the contours of what you wrote about? Yeah. So Trump and his close family are really expanding their business interests into the cryptocurrency world in ways that stand to profit them significantly. I mean, to the tunes of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. While Trump is simultaneously influencing policy such that regulators are being called off of the cryptocurrency world, we've seen at least eight enforcement actions against cryptocurrency companies, including those alleging fraud be dropped or stayed pending resolution. He has dismantled the cryptocurrency investigations team at the Department of Justice. And so he's really shaping policy in such a way that he stands to profit heavily from these businesses that he is simultaneously creating, not to mention the avenues for bribery and corruption more directly using cryptocurrency. Yeah, we've talked a fair amount here about the Trump cryptocurrency, whatever you want to call it,

the universe, because all of his various meme coins and products. And so I do want to get to that again as well for folks who have missed that. But the thing that you covered that I think has been underappreciated that you referenced there is how the policy, the US policy has benefited these other big players in the crypto industry.

And you have this chart here, we'll put it up on the screen. And I'm just gonna run through a couple of them real fast and have you kind of explain what you've seen. But Ripple, there's an SEC enforcement case against them that was stayed.

Seventy five million of a previous fine was returned to the company. Coinbase, there's an SEC enforcement case that was dismissed against Coinbase. Andreessen Horowitz, there are four of the employees that are installed in formal or informal positions of influence in the White House. I've talked a lot about Justin Sun and Tron and he who put 75 million into the Trump coin. There's an enforcement case against him that was stayed. This goes on and on. People can see the full list here. Binance, I want to mention at the bottom, SEC enforcement case stayed. Crypto.com, SEC enforcement case dismissed with prejudice. I mean, what so so talk about what that means for those companies and how treating those companies well and giving those companies favorable treatment might benefit

the Trump crypto corporate efforts. Well, it's sort of multifold. So for one, he has profited directly from many of those companies in the sense that many of those companies were major donors to his political campaigns. You know, millions of dollars from various entities listed there who received a very direct benefit for those contributions in the sense that they're now not having to face these enforcement cases. But then there's also the general regulatory stance in the U.S. towards cryptocurrency, which has taken a complete turn since Trump was installed in office. You know, as I mentioned, those cases have been dropped, but that also is reflective of a policy from the Securities and Exchange Commission that is, you know, no longer treating these crypto assets under the securities laws that previously were considered to have applied. And as the SEC has backed off from these cases, there's really no indication of who would step in to oversee these markets. It's sort of a wild west right now,

even more than it previously was, which is saying something. I mean, the regulation that we did have was actually quite minimal, despite what the industry likes to say. And so, you know, this is really laying the groundwork for companies in the crypto world to act with impunity without any regulators or oversight or consumer protections, which is, of course, very beneficial to those companies who don't have to, you know, take on the costs associated with those types of actions. They don't have to limit the types of products that they might provide to their customers, thanks to those regulators. And, of course, Trump now is seeking to very directly profit, not just from these political contributions from crypto companies, but from his own crypto companies that he's launching

that, again, will be engaging in these activities where regulators previously were starting to pay more attention. Yes, let's talk about the direct business interest, because you're right to mention that you received a lot of donor money from these organizations. But there have also been some reports recently, some of those companies, I mentioned Binance and others, that there might be direct business arrangements then with the Trump family and that Trump might want to put his coin on some of these platforms. Just just give a couple of examples of like the direct financial relationship between Trump and these companies that the SEC is letting off the hook.

Absolutely. So for example, recently there's been reporting that the Trump associated World Liberty Financial Project, which is a crypto platform that is majority owned by Trump and he receives 75% of protocol revenues. They've recently launched a stablecoin and they've reportedly been in talks with Binance to list the stablecoin on the Binance platform. That's happening simultaneously with the SEC case against Binance being stayed, with talks with Binance to remove a compliance monitor that was installed at the company because the company pleaded guilty to criminal violations of anti-money laundering laws and sanctions. And so there's sort of this two-way relationship happening there with Binance,

it seems. The same types of activities are happening with partnerships between the Trump Media Group and Crypto.com. They just announced a partnership with Crypto.com to launch some exchange traded products that will be offered through this new Truth Media financial platform. And literally three days after that announcement crypto.com got the news that the sec was um dropping an investigation into the company so i mean those are just two examples like what what so what kind of products are they going to put on the platform like what the the this is the and this is the the truth social company because obviously there are multiple companies there yeah right yeah so this is yeah truth media is the Truth Social company? Because obviously there are multiple companies there.

Right, yes. Truth Media is the parent company of the Truth Social platform. They've recently, I think in January, announced that they were going to be launching this fintech brand called Truth.Fi. And the details have been a little bit scant, but they've mostly talked about launching what they call America first investment products, which will be exchange traded products containing both traditional and crypto assets that they consider to be America first in some way, which is a little ironic given that their partner crypto.com is a Singapore based company, but that's maybe neither here nor there. Yeah, well, it's crypto.com is Singapore based company. And obviously, that direct rift, again, just going back to the intro, totally unprecedented in American history. That's the U.S. sitting president would be doing a financial deal with a company that was dealing with an oversight enforcement from the government. And then they would get relieved of that oversight enforcement and there's nothing nothing like that in our history um but at least they're a singapore-based

company they're also doing deals with chinese and russia based you know crypto like efforts and we mentioned i mentioned justin sun who put money into uh which one was it was that the was that the world liberty financial world liberty financial. He purchased $75 million worth of the tokens issued by that company in exchange for an advisory position. And shortly afterwards, the SEC enforcement coin with Trump and Witkoff. So are there other examples of that that you've seen Chinese and Russian involvement with crypto is a little bit fraught, given that those countries both have somewhat nebulous relationships with cryptocurrency and crypto mining in those companies. In what way? Explain for the country outlawed it. And so, you know, he sort of left to avoid any sort of or seemingly to avoid any sort of action there. And I mean, there is certainly, you know, Russia has been warming to cryptocurrencies as they have faced more sanctions from the United States. They've,

you know, there've been reports about them using cryptocurrencies in their own trading and so on and so forth. So the relationships with, you know, between those countries and crypto is sort of fluid and ever evolving, but there aren't that many chinese or russian crypto companies that do direct business with the united states one of the other things from your article that i hadn't seen maybe it's been out there but um is that the the uh there's a lot of attention around the trump and melania coins that were offered uh the trump coin right before the inauguration the melania coin was right after i forget exactly right around the inauguration yeah it Melania coin was right after. I forget exactly right around the inauguration. Yeah, it was only a couple of days after the early Trump coin. Yeah. But it seems

like the Trump controlled wallet has cashed out a couple of million, both of the Trump coin and the Melania coin. And we're coming up on another opportunity for them to take out hard cash from those offerings. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So it's really challenging to sort of put a hard number on valuations around meme coins. I wrote about this a little bit around the time because people were reporting that Trump had made billions of dollars off of these meme coins, which was not accurate. But there was some good reporting from the Financial Times recently that estimated Trump has cashed out around $350 million from the Trump meme coin alone. Following that reporting, we're seeing more movements of funds from Trump-controlled crypto wallets that are being traced on-chain. And then the Melania token has not been as lucrative as the Trump token.

But we're still seeing money moving in wallets that are controlled by the team that launched those tokens. So $30 million of funds that were supposed to be allocated to what they were calling a community wallet were recently moved in association with the Melania token. So I mean, there's real money moving around as a result of these tokens, which Trump has been able to sell to his base. Is there any at this point, like rumors or the evidence of like, who is putting money into these into the Trump owned coins? I mean, that's another part of this. It's like very, very opaque at this point, right? Yeah. I mean, that's the challenging thing about blockchains. You know, despite the fact that everything is public and traceable on chain, you still have

to try to connect these wallets, which are pseudonyms essentially, with actual individuals or trading firms or whoever might be behind it. And that's challenging to do. So there's not been a ton of insight, I would say, into who is buying these Trump tokens. Certainly some of it is the usual crypto traders who are, you know, experienced traders that are essentially trying to time these launches. We saw a lot of automated trading happening with the Trump tokens, which is pretty normal for meme coins, where, you know, people try to buy it earlier than you could humanly do it and then sell it at a profit. But as far as, you know, major buyers, it's really not been super clear. What do you, any thoughts on the ramifications of all this deregulation at this point or like what else we can expect? Yeah, I mean, I think the ramifications are going to be very serious

for people who are involved with the cryptocurrency world, you know, who are trading crypto or who are hoping to invest in maybe crypto businesses. I think it's a very, very risky time to be doing that. I mean, it always has been, but there really are no apparent rules right now. And the rules that are discussed to be coming into, that are being written in Congress right now are being written by the cryptocurrency companies. And so I don't think it's reasonable to expect that these rules will be anything other than benefiting those companies, likely at the expense of everyday people who might use their services. More broadly speaking, I think there's real risk to people who have no involvement with cryptocurrency. That's something I've really been trying to underscore because I think there's this knee-jerk reaction by some people when they

see reporting about Trump's meme coin and his crypto involvement that's like, well, you know, if you're dumb enough to buy the meme coin, you deserve to lose it all. And why should I care? You know, there's more important things to worry about. But I think that this regulatory shift is actually very dangerous to everybody, regardless of whether you hold crypto or have any involvement in that sector, because they are working to pare back regulations around banks getting involved with crypto, pension funds and other retirement programs, investing into cryptocurrencies. So, you know, there are ways in which they are really working to integrate the crypto sector, which is notoriously volatile,

it blows up practically on a regular basis, with the traditional economy, with traditional finance. And so, you know, we could really see Contagion from a crypto blow up, you know, we could really see contagion from a crypto blow up, you know, hitting the traditional financial system in a very serious way, especially as the sector grows and its integration with the economy grows. And, you know, its integration with the government, which is talking about a Bitcoin strategic reserve, for example, and, you know, getting direct exposure to crypto assets. Is there any more generous assessment of all this? And I have friends at some of these companies who get mad at me when I talk about this and call and say, look, you know, we, you know, the Democratic administration, the Biden administration and Gensler didn't understand crypto. And we need to get people in there that do understand it so we can have smart regulations that, you know, allow people that are serious and investors and Bitcoin and other products that are more legitimate, you know, so that there can be an environment for them to grow and we can, you know, foster innovation and blah, blah, blah. Like, do you are you sympathetic to that argument at all?

Yeah, I mean, that is a very good summary of the sort of story that comes out of the crypto world. I'm really not very sympathetic to that argument. I mean, we all lived through the FTX collapse, which happened under Biden and the regulatory regime that they claim was too strict. You know, we saw the collapse of many crypto companies, including American ones. You know, people will claim that FTX is an offshore company. The regulators maybe couldn't have done anything. But, you know, American companies, Celsius, for example, was an American-based crypto company that collapsed. And there were, you know, there was serious fraud happening there. That was what was happening with these so-called overzealous regulators who were supposedly stamping down innovation in the industry by being too aggressive. And so I don't put much stock in that claim because I think, if anything, the regulators were not doing enough. There was not enough oversight of the industry. I also really question whether the crypto industry realizes that

this deregulatory push, you know, creating this total Wild West for the crypto industry is actually good for the crypto industry. You know, I think that a lot of them have not really thought this out very much and they haven't realized that when there is no trust at all in the markets or in you know a business not just up and scamming you and running off with your money people don't want anything to do with that um you know people understood that crypto is risky it's volatile you know they're generally speaking willing to um you know, they're generally speaking willing to, you know, operate under those conditions. But when there is the when there's no trust that someone might not just take your bitcoins and run away with them, people don't want anything to do with it. And so I think that by, you know,

people are dreaming of this sort of, you know, innovation explosion as all the guardrails are removed. But I think we're going to really just see an explosion in the same type of scamming, predatory behavior, you know, malfeasance in the crypto world that has already given it, under the previous administration, which was supposedly overly aggressive in terms of regulation, this reputation that it is scam central and that it's nothing but a grift. Yeah, I'm with you on that. But I push back always on these folks when they say that it's like, look, if there was if Walmart, you know, had a section that had legitimate businesses

like Bitcoin or whatever, where you could where you could buy products and feel good about it. And then there were like three other sections of the store where if you went over there, they would steal your wallet. It's like nobody would go into Walmart. That's not how you create a business that works. All right. Well, appreciate it very much, Molly. We'll be having you back. The article again is Trump's newest grift, building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators. Her newsletter is Citation Needed. It's really important stuff. And I appreciate you coming on the Bulwark YouTube page. Thank you for having me.