Balaji Srinivasan: 17 thoughts on the first billion-dollar crypto president

Written by: @balajis

Compiled by: Scof, ChainCatcher

Overnight, the vast majority of the next U.S. president’s wealth ($59 billion) is now held in cryptocurrency. This phenomenon holds true even if the value of cryptocurrencies drops by 90%.

what does that mean?

1. First of all, cryptocurrency has jumped from perhaps only 1% to over 90% of President Trump’s assets. Many early Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana holders experienced similar leaps in wealth.

2. Second, this phenomenon – the relative devaluation of all non-crypto assets – will become a shared reality for billions of people around the world in our lifetimes, as fiat currencies decline.

3. Third, every politician, influencer, and celebrity around the world is watching this phenomenon, and they will closely observe its political and financial consequences. If this “meme coin” sticks around in the long term — and that’s a big problem — they may follow suit.

4. Next, if tens of thousands of personal meme coins emerge on the market, the situation may not be entirely unacceptable, because every buyer knows what they are buying: the potential future brand value of the meme.

5. The key to everything is whether the value of Trump’s assets can be sustained. If other celebrity meme coins quickly go to zero, Trump is different, with (a) over 100 million followers, (b) constant daily media attention, (c) presidential immunity, and (d) unprecedented Government control.

6. Therefore, Trump now has a strong incentive to legalize cryptocurrencies in the most radical way, regardless of what form of political counterattack he faces.

7. Of course, this may be criticized as a conflict of interest. But the Biden family takes a "10% cut," Pelosi trades stocks, Hillary makes money from speeches, Podosta manages a $300 billion climate fund, and Obama signs a Netflix contract. All of these people became millionaires through various means and received various defensible benefits.

8. So Trump’s rebuttal might be: He just does everything in public. His point may be that transparency solves the problem of conflicts of interest.

9. This may be true, but it does not completely solve the alignment problem. As background: A company's CEO is typically one of the largest shareholders, but his interests are aligned with those of all employees because they hold the same stock. Ideally, all shareholders rise and fall together.

10. By analogy, the ideal situation is that the president should be aligned with the interests of citizens, for example, they all hold some kind of "US currency" and receive certain dividends from US profits. It's kind of like the Alaska Standing Fund.

11. One way to solve the alignment problem might be for Trump to airdrop some "Trump coins" to every American citizen. Perhaps an easier approach, though, would be for him to personally email every Trump supporter offering free Trump Coins.

12. Specifically: He can notify everyone 72 hours in advance, and many Democrats will even join his mailing list by then, just to get an airdrop.

13. Is this legal? Well, it’s legal for politicians to send fundraising requests to their constituents, but to my knowledge, no politician has ever attempted a personal drop—that is, a gift of money—especially on such a large scale.

14. According to the current valuation, Trump can airdrop 77 million Trump voters to each of them with 100 US dollars of locked-up Trump coins. This alone will cost him 7.7 billion US dollars. After all, this asset is It was almost worthless two days ago. Even if each person airdrops $500, he can still have more than $20 billion left.

15. Yes, doing so will consume some of Trump’s assets. But if you have to join his mailing list to receive coins, and the airdrop can be carried out without capital gains tax, this will "self-finance" by converting Trump supporters into more committed supporters.

16. It could even win him enough political support to destroy the Democratic patronage machine. Basically, by joining Trump’s mailing list and supporting his encryption policies, you get something like a basic income.

17. If 77 million Americans could also benefit from TrumpCoin, the accusation of conflict of interest would cease to exist. It would be a new social contract, a personal relationship between the president and his citizens.

Food for thought.