this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, but I think you're reading into my words something they didn't say or imply. In fact I tried my best to avoid wording it in a way that implies crypto is a scam (because I don't believe it myself).

What you've quoted strictly implies 2 things:

  1. There are people who consider crypto a scam
  2. Everyone will regard crypto as a scam after trump's future actions.

The 2nd is definitely an exaggeration, but neither of them claim crypto is a scam only that it has an image that it is - which I maintain it does with a significant portion of people.

I do think trump picked crypto as a target for his attention because it's a volatile and under regulated market he may be able exploit to try to make money off of whoever listens to him. I hope I'm wrong though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I apologize, there's a lot of anti-crypto group think here on Lemmy, and your comment read like that. There absolutely are a lot of crypto scams and reasons to dislike the technology generally, but there are real problems being solved and ways to use the technology productively, so I get a bit aggressive in pointing out that the group think is imprecise at best.

The second being an exaggeration is what made it look like group think.

trump... make money

Idk, I honestly think his entire focus is on getting elected. Yeah, he wouldn't say no to more money, but I think it's in service of getting himself onto office again, not to get even more rich. I think he saw hating crypto as advantageous in the past, and now he sees supporting crypto as advantageous.

Yeah, maybe it's just a grift. I guess we'll see.

Here's the evidence I see:

  • Trump and Biden are close in the polls
  • Trump speaks at the Libertarian convention (many are into crypto) and gets booed
  • with RFK in, the election could come down to a small number of votes

I think he's trying to convince conservative leaning libertarians, single-issue RFK voters (he's pro-crypto too), and other fringe voters to vote for him instead of whatever protest vote they'd normally go with. He's not trying to appeal to Biden voters, he's trying to pull protest votes back in.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

No problem!

Your thinking seems more insightful than mine.

My reasoning that he is mainly after the money is that in the past year he has been paying a lot of legal fees and fines, while trying to run a campaign. He had his NFT collection which made him a quick buck to then immediately floor in value, same for trump media stocks - except they then skyrocketed again, and now flooring again. So.. Just seems like something he'd do.

The 2nd reason is that crypto is a very divisive topic with loads of people hating on it - including banks and some other financial institutions. I'd expect it's a double edged sword for supporters, but maybe he's gaining more from it than losing in terms of votes.

Considering that it's been a few days since he made his statement and there hasn't been massive movement on BTC price, he's either not influential enough to impact it or I was wrong.

/shrug

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah, you might have a point. Let's see which scam, electoral or financial, he's trying to pull. Or maybe it's both... I'm guessing things will heat up one way or another as we get closer to the election.