Recently, I wrote about Donald Trump’s Chinese crypto “investor,” Justin Sun, who “invested” so much in Trump’s crypto company, they’re now business partners. Sun also happens to have been charged with fraud by the SEC. Other than getting a crypto-friendly SEC chair from Trump, it wasn’t clear to me what other grift might be coming down the pike as a result.
At least some of it was revealed by Chris Hayes Friday night. In short, it’s a horrifying plan to make Trump’s already obscenely-wealthy donors even wealthier. It’s at the expense of the rest of us and risking our economy while they’re at it.
As Hayes spelled it out, it began with Trump’s announcement that he’s appointing wealthy, right-wing South African venture capitalist and former PayPal exec David Sacks to be White House crypto and AI czar. Sacks is a critic of diversity and is pals with like-minded South African billionaires Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Sacks is also a big Trump supporter and a big crypto owner.
Hayes went on to explain how the crypto bros spent big in the 2024 election in order to face a friendlier regulatory environment under Trump and a Republican Senate. Now it’s payback time. And guess who’s doing the paying? Spoiler alert: not Trump or his ultra-wealthy buddies.
Despite its “supreme volatility” and being “rife with scams, fraud, grift and disasters, blowups,” Senate Republicans are working on a bill to transfer “billions and billions of dollars of money from the US government, from taxpayers, and hand it over to a handful of big crypto holders,” Hayes said.
Bitcoin is a valuable asset but it’s not liquid. “It has no practical use, really, outside of the few gimmicks, and it’s very useful for criminal cartels,” Hayes said. If you try to sell it all off, it would flood the market and tank the price. The solution? Sell it to the U.S. government.
Hayes played a clip of Sen. Cynthia Lummis claiming Bitcoin will be used to reduce the debt. But Hayes said you can’t pay the debt down in Bitcoin.
Hayes explained the real plan:
HAYES: The plan is the Bitcoin Act would have the government sell off some of its gold reserves, you know, the stuff from Fort Knox, and use the money to buy a billion Bitcoin at current market value, that would cost $100 billion. now the actual price would likely be much higher, because that market value will almost certainly rise as a result when a new buyer enters the market and boosts the price of the asset the buyer is now legally obligated to buy.
This is an enormous heist. They’re just backing the truck up to the government in front of all of us, a massive bailout to the crypto world. The opportunity to turn a speculative asset into real cash on your dime. And presumably, David Sacks, as the crypto czar, will help usher that plan through.
I recommend you call your senators now and tell them to oppose this bill.
