The second son of the former president has recast himself as a crypto bro, teasing in a tweet last week that he and older sibling, Don Jr., had “a big announcement” coming down the blockchain.
“I have truly fallen in love with Crypto / DeFi,” he wrote, using an investor term for decentralized finance. He tagged Don Jr. and his father, as well as the family’s organization.
“We’re about to shake up the crypto world with something HUGE,” Don Jr. agreed the next day.
While the pair have yet to unveil their super huge, super awesome project, Eric graced the pages of the New York Post on Wednesday to continue whipping up excitement for what promises to be—depending on what side of the crypto fanatic/skeptic divide you fall on—either the kick in the pants the market needs or MAGA World’s next big scam.
“It’s digital real estate,” Eric gushed to the Post.
“It’s equitable. It’s collateral anyone can get access to and do so instantly. I don’t know if people realize what a shake-up that is for the world of banking and finance. I hope we can help change that.”
After playing into the golden rule (always trust a man who promises you instant access to wealth), Eric changed tack, railing against the “financial discrimination” his family has experienced; an interesting way of scooting around the subject of the Trumps’ variousmonetarywoes. He capped things off on a lighter note, however, expressing his desire to help build “a world where we don’t have to play by the big bank’s playbook.”
Given that cryptocurrency and its cornerstone, Bitcoin, has enjoyed general mainstream awareness since at least 2017, it seems strange that Eric, 40, would choose now to start shilling for the coin.
But in a strange coincidence of timing that likely has no greater significance, Eric’s original tweet dropped the same day that the Donald J. Trump meme token saw its liquidity pulled, an exit scam known in the crypto world as a “rug pull” that will see a coin’s creators hype it up, then abruptly disappear with investor funds, leaving it worthless.
Because of the way the blockchain functions, it’s impossible to know for sure who created the DJT coin earlier this year. Credit has been claimed by Martin ‘Pharma Bro’ Shkreli, who said in June that he had worked with Donald Trump’s 18-year-old son, Barron, to create the token.
“I have over 1000 pieces of evidence I created it with Barron,” he told crypto sleuth ZachXBT.
When the coin lost 95 percent of its market value on Tuesday, Shkreli pointed to Barron, tweeting in response to a user asking him to comment on its plunge to “ask barron, i dont have the keys or any tokens.”
Shkreli did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday night. Nor did the Trump campaign, which has never formally acknowledged the DJT token or Shkreli’s claims about Barron’s involvement.
Crypto’s DJT is not to be confused with Nasdaq’s DJT, the ticker under which shares of the Trump Media & Technology Group trade.
Trump Media has suffered more setbacks than steps forward since publicly debuting in March, with the Truth Social owner admitting at the end of last week that it made $836,900 in revenue last quarter, a 30 percent drop from the year prior. Its quarterly losses amounted to $16.4 million, it said.
After that Friday announcement, the stock hit an even lower low on Monday, plunging just over 5 percent as Trump returned to X for the first time in more than a year in advance of a live streamed interview with owner Elon Musk on the platform that night. Shares cratered out at $24.60, their lowest in months.
As for the stock and coin’s namesake, there was a time when the former president turned up his nose at cryptocurrency, unloading on it as “a scam” and “a disaster waiting to happen” in interviews as recently as 2021.
“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” he tweeted in 2019. “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”
Trump’s observations remain correct; the asset class is fundamentally unregulated and untethered to trust in the government or a central bank, leaving investors vulnerable to risk, ruin, and con artists of all shapes and sizes.
Since President Joe Biden took office, the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed dozens of actions against crypto firms and personalities. Biden himself has advocated for “appropriate guardrails” to be installed around the medium to better protect consumers and investors.
But Trump is singing a markedly different tune these days, backpedaling to praise crypto amid a windfall of campaign contributions from crypto executives and support from super PACs goosed by digital coin evangelists. Advisors told The Washington Post last month that this pivot was the result of the crypto lobby’s overtures.
“Anyone who has ever walked into Trump’s office and offered him an easy way to make some money, they get his attention. They are off to the races,” Tim L. O’Brien, a Trump biographer, explained to the newspaper. “He’s always been opportunistic about policy.”
As a direct result, according to the Post’s reporting, crypto was for the first time injected into the official Republican Party platform that rolled out over the summer. The platform, which takes its cues from Trump’s own views, vowed to “end Democrats’ unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency.
“We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin,” it continues, “and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their digital assets and transact free from government surveillance and control.”
Eric and Don Jr. are just exercising those rights—no FUD allowed.
