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Now that crypto seems to be firmly on one side of the Culture War, in that Trump and co. are actively promoting it, what do we see as the future of crypto under a Trump presidency?
Personally I am only just getting into the space, but continue to be surprised by just the sheer amount of money and energy behind a lot of these projects, and communities. For instance right now in the Solana meme coin market, AI agents on twitter and other areas are a huge point of interest.
What fascinates me is the fact that the crypto ecosystem seems to offer an alternative way to get funding for startups, especially in "hot" areas like AI. Instead of going the VC route, a creator can just go straight to twitter and create an automated agent, then make a meme coin off of that agent and potentially make millions of dollars.
For some examples of this, we have @truth_terminal, which is I believe the most popular AI agent on the site which sort of started the entire wave. https://x.com/truth_terminal. The fascinating thing about this account is that it asked for $50,000 to start making money, and Marc Andreessen actually gave it the money, which it then took and became a millionaire from crypto.
More recently, there are all sorts of projects coming out around meme coins and AI. A ton of them are just general slop, porn bots, et cetera, but some seem to have real creative vision / potential behind them, like for instance @pillzumi, which seems to be like a blend of AI agents + an AI-generated anime series, or something like that.
All this to say that while many see crypto as nothing but scams and a waste of time, in my opinion some of the most genuinely novel and interesting projects are happening there.
To bring it back to the culture war - almost all of crypto and these AI innovations seem to be swinging heavily right wing. Same with the broader VC / tech environment. How will the left respond? Do you think democrats will begin to be more friendly to crypto, or will they double down on trying to lock it out of traditional financial systems?
Do you think Trump will actually make significant progress in regulating crypto and integrating it in the financial system of the U.S.? What would be the main blockers? How much political capital will he really need?
Okay, I'll bring a contrarian take to the table:
I'm a Bitcoin Maxi in the sense that I don't think any coins can possibly displace it at this point.
But there's seemingly very little stuff you can "DO" with Crypto. And the stuff you can do is based around avoiding financial regs or international monetary restrictions.
I will accept the characterization of BTC as "digital gold," but Gold can be put to use as something other than a store of value. And unlike Gold it could in theory be forked to increase supply or otherwise devalue/debase itself if the miners so chose.
So even without believing that its an unsustainable Ponzi, I just ask what goal are Bitcoin holders coordinating towards, other than getting really rich as denominated in USD?
I'm not even asking what the 'endgame' is, its just, what does one 'do' with the BTC other than hold it, occasionally buy more, and maybe sell it if you ultimately need to transact business in USD?
Because there's not a lot to 'do' with BTC, I don't think Trump will actually do much to it. He may call off the regulatory watchdogs which will lead to an influx of money into the space, but even if this leads to a lot more projects, we've been waiting for 13 years for a project that actually leverages BTC's properties to do something, shall we say, truly useful.
Yes, Bitcoin has basically failed to become a currency. Though a lot of it is due to regulators frowning on it and issuing veiled threats to jail you for financing terrorists if you try to make it useful.
Since Chevron deference was shot down by SCOTUS and Trump seems bullish on Bitcoin, it could be a good time to be a Bitcoin maxi again.
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