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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   27860 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Donald Trump launched a shitcoin!. Trump Memes - $TRUMP - on Solana. It has a market cap of $5B, comparable to actual company $DJT, and a fully diluted value of $29B. For those who are unfamiliar, a 'shitcoin' or 'memecoin' is a term for a tradeable token that lives on a blockchain, like Ethereum or Solana, that doesn't make a claim to have value or future profits, and whose price relies on a large number of retail traders who think it'll go even higher, or that it's funny. Trump Memes joins coins like Shiba Inu, Fartcoin, Pepe, and Dogwifhat, and is now #4 for market cap. They function to redistribute huge amounts of wealth from gullible crypto enthusiasts to the token developers, smart traders, and people who happen to see it first. And, of course, 80% of all Trump tokens that exist were allocated to the coin's developers, locked up for some time period.

FT: The president-elect of the US is promoting a shitcoin?

Is this good for crypto? It doesn't hurt to have a friendly President - Trump and his team were embracing crypto, planning crypto-friendly executive orders, designating it as a 'national priority', and even seriously considering a 'strategic bitcoin reserve'. It might be bad, in the long run, though - it's the perfect setup for the next Dem administration to crack down on crypto. Or even a bipartisan crackdown, especially once Trump is too old to be politically relevant, or just dead from old age, and the grip of his personality over the Republican party is gone.

And, what a thing to do a few days before your inauguration. As much has people do irrationally hate Trump, I kind of buy the liberal claim that, because we all know Trump is corrupt and depraved, and the way in which he is so is incredibly funny, people don't hold him to the same standards they'd hold their political enemies, or anyone else. Joe Biden's done a lot of bad things, but if he blatantly scammed his supporters for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, the response from his allies would be a lot stronger!

I don't like the impersonal process-oriented bureaucracy, the expert elite, the oligarchy behind democracy, whatever you call it. They are hypocritical, corrupt, dysfunctional, whatever else. But they're not infinitely that. Society still more or less works. If the alternative (whether that's just more MAGA candidates winning elections, or a moldbuggian new regime) is concentrating power in strong individuals, and this is the kind of individual that smart right-wingers - empirically - chose to concentrate power in, is that really better?

Apparently $MELANIA is live now too. There are like six different scam impersonation accounts in the replies, with hundreds of likes.

ETA:

To make this a bit more substantive, why assume the price action of $TRUMP is organic rather than wash trading in advance of a rug pull? It's not like Trump's previous crypto grift (anyone remember World Financial Liberty?) went all that well. Why do people want to buy this but not that?

News of great import: https://x.com/0xRenaissance/status/1881085743336181974

If you look at the memecoin's price chart on its side, it looks a bit like Trump's face.

The burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire

That personalist politics are prone to corruption and abuse is well-known. Very occasionally you get Lee Kuan Yew, but mostly you get thugs and conmen.

The trouble is that personalist followers are really good at convincing themselves the vices of their big man are actually virtues.

Fuck $TRUMP, I'm buying $HANANIA.

It already has a market cap of $12 million and I trust Hanania an order of magnitude more than Trump to do what's best for everyone.

I think it's entirely plausible Hanania will pump and dump and have 0 guilt over it, because anyone who invests in a meme coin deserves what's coming to them

I'll be launching $NYBBLER next week. Its value is fixed at 0, but it'll get to be a deeper and deeper zero the longer it is held.

crazy how much this shit has gone up--even now $trump is higher than it was yesterday at this time.

Smart move by him. Anyone who is even internet-famous should launch their own coin like this. Free $ pretty much .

Calling it now, this is this liquidity cycle's dogcoin moment. Everyone conjuring value out of nothing as if by magic is a surprisingly consistent signal.

What do you mean?

The current economic system produces recurrent ~5 year cycles of growth and recession that map onto interest rate decisions from the Fed whose timing coincides with both POTUS terms and cryptocurrency market bubbles. The nature of the link and whether it's coincidental is debated, but I believe, alongside others, that much of these effects are downstream from monetary policy and psychological effects.

During the last cycle, the near-top of the cryptocurrency market was marked by a fad of people releasing or pumping dog themed coins trying to replicate the success of dogecoin, a good example of this is $SHIB.

Liquidity traders believe that you can observe the psychology of the market to time long term trading decisions and profit from the variations of the liquidity cycle.

What I'm saying is that this celebrity coin fad looks a lot like the fads of the past cycle, which may signify that we are close to the top. And that we may expect recession and/or a crash along with a yield curve reversion this year or the next.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/boom-and-bust-cycle.asp

I'm thinking through ideas of what to do with this. No promises but there may be room for experimentation (this not how you hype crypto, but honesty matters to me).

My long-term interests are aligned with yours, Hanania Coin holders. We all rise or collapse together.

This is a public offering of unregistered securities. Hanania is in deep shit if this takes off and blows up.

no one cares. it's evident that when even celebrities can launch coins that crash and burn and not face the consequence that the threat of the law is a paper tiger. The worst worst thing that can happen is it's a civil matter and he pays a fine. afik no one has been prosecuted for promoting or launching a coin.

What scam? As you say

For those who are unfamiliar, a 'shitcoin' or 'memecoin' is a term for a tradeable token that lives on a blockchain, like Ethereum or Solana, that doesn't make a claim to have value or future profits

If they aren't making claims of value or profits, there's no scam. It's no different than selling Trump baseball cards.

In reality, it is very hard for the creators/holders to not make claims of value or profits. The incentive for them to hype their coin is too much.

This is the just latest episode of Trump engaging in borderline scummy "business", like the the weird Bible he sold during the campaign. Individually, these things could be dismissed as funny gimmicks, but cumulatively they grow tiring.

I want our politicians to be serious people, and very few of them on all sides seem to be these days.

To be fair, if the next President elect from the Democrats would sell baseball cards of herself the day before inauguration (and that money is not 100% going to charity), I would doom and gloom about the republic.

The claim here rings true:

because we all know Trump is corrupt and depraved, and the way in which he is so is incredibly funny, people don't hold him to the same standards they'd hold their political enemies, or anyone else.

See the laconic comment about that in the FT link:

Trump has sold sneakers, watches, jewellery and a $60 Bible in the months leading up to the election, as MainFT ably reported. He also promoted a platform called “World Liberty Financial” and its token.

Do we know how much of this coin Trump himself (or his company I guess) holds?

Assuming it is indeed a substantial money maker for him, and Trump-supporting "investors" do indeed end up losing whatever they put into it -- they might not care? Think of it as a "thank you" to the guy for breaking the previous (very bad) system. I guess it end-runs political fundraising law, but that seems kind of unconstitutional to me anyways -- so why fret? Democrats will seethe, of course -- but I don't think this is actually illegal?

There was a similar dynamic with the Canadian Convoy fundraising; Left Inc. promulgated a bunch of (probably fake) stories about how the main organizer was spending the funds (and later her legal defense donations) on designer dresses and whatnot, which they felt was some sort of knockout punch -- but the common response from actual donors was more like "So what? She fucking won, I don't care what she spends her money on."

agree. trump saw, correctly, there would be huge demand for this. he's not making any promises. The disclaimer on this thing is huge, which 99.999 percent of ppl who buy this will never see, let alone read in entirety. his bases are covered.

Politicians are corrupt. In the same way it’s not concerning behavior in a dog to fear the vacuum cleaner but it would be in a person, this kind of stuff just comes with the territory.

Trump is less tasteful, that’s it.

This line of reasoning seems like a bit of a cop-out and/or an excuse to suspend critical thinking. If all pols are secretly crooks, then I don't have to feel bad about supporting the guy who is openly a crook.

'Politicians' are not corrupt. Some politicians are corrupt, and not every corrupt politician is equally corrupt. If I see one guy doing lots of corruption, a second guy doing a little corruption, and another third not doing any corruption, "all three are doing similar amounts of corruption but the latter two are better at hiding it" is not the most parsimonious explanation.

Ok- Trump is somewhat less corrupt but much less tasteful about it than Biden. This does not make it more concerning. And it seems like the case that Trump is more corrupt than a typical presidential-level politician isn’t being made- instead the case being made is that his corruption is executed in ways different from the usual.

Trump is somewhat less corrupt but much less tasteful about it than Bide

That would require some substantiation, especially considering this might be the single most corrupt act by monetary value of any US president, ever.

Even adjusted for inflation?

It’s fair to call out that the media and the left have poisoned the well of useful conversation and nuance with their hysterics. But at the same time, I’m fucking tired of this fully generalizable hand wave.

This is not even a response, it relies on a series of logical leap that are entirely lazy deflections.

first it requires jumping from the truism that political corruption is inevitable on the whole, to the unfounded conclusion thus any given circumstance its therefore inevitable.

It’s no different than identity politics that jumps from a tenable claim that racism exists, to the ridiculous conclusion that any given scenario must have racism hiding in it, thus justifying any reaction.

It also requires treating all corruption as binary, then voila with a side of what aboutism,

Suddenly any concern about blatent corruption becomes dismissed as aesthetics, nativity, or even argued as actually virtuous since it above the board and therefore some kind of subversive transparency.

At the end of the day this schtick is played out. It’s just the opposite side of the coin as TDS, and just as brain rotted and empty rhetoric

There are degrees - Trump is in a particularly high-risk group for corruption because he doesn't really seem to believe anything particularly strongly except that he should be President. As OP says, there is no way mainstream Democrat (or moderate Republican) would do this kind of thing without getting an avalanche of shit from their allies as much as their opponents, but because it's Trump his opponents are past the point where his stock can go any lower and his allies would never dare criticise him.

I kind of buy the liberal claim that, because we all know Trump is corrupt and depraved, and the way in which he is so is incredibly funny, people don't hold him to the same standards they'd hold their political enemies, or anyone else.

Theres something to that, but its not everything. Cats try to steal your food, stay sitting on your legs when you want to get up, and scratch up your furniture. Do we accept this because "we all know they are selfish and incorrigable, and the way in which they are so is incredibly cute"? Again, thats part of it, but also, an adult human doing this would be a worrying sign, in a way its just not for the cat. Its not about a slice of ham, its about sending a message. In the other direction, you should be suspicious of a serious mormon who drinks like a normal person, even if normal drinking behaviour is not concerning per se.

Okay but we're putting the heavy drinker or the cat in the position of commander in chief of the United States military! That's bad. Like, if the surgeon operating on you is drinking a 'normal amount' at 2am the night before, you should be concerned about that whether or not he's a mormon.

Im saying it makes sense that people are less concerned when Trump does it, because the character implication is less. Im not saying what the right absolute level of concern is, because Im not sure how to think about that when the implication is gone.

Okay but we're putting the heavy drinker or the cat in the position of commander in chief of the United States military! That's bad.

Worked OK for Grant.

And Garfield.

Grant wasn’t an Ernest Hemingway-style persistent heavy drinker, glass of whisky always in hand. Grant was more of a “spend nine months teetotal and then go on a three day bender” kind of drinker. Also by the time he was President he had quit drinking for good. Now Lyndon Johnson on the other hand, was a persistent heavy drinker and say what you will about him it never diminished his effectiveness as President.

Grant was more of a spend nine months teetotal and then go on a three day bender kind of drinker.

In a nuclear world, this seems ... worse?

you should be suspicious of a serious mormon who drinks like a normal person, even if normal drinking behaviour is not concerning per se

Very much so. I am Muslim and am always slightly concerned when I see another Muslim-esque person drink in a way that I'm not if I see a white westerner drink.

Conversely, when I see Turks or balkan Muslims not drink when everyone else is, I become concerned in a way that I’m not when I see a white Christian turn down a beer.

I think this is a very interesting question. When I encounter someone who is nominally a religious trad drinking (in the case of Muslims or I guess Mormons), aborting, whoring etc, the deep hypocrisy this represents is the strongest characteristic of a certain type of chauvinism. It manifests itself in many ways, for example a liberal, promiscuous, immodestly dressing woman from an Islamic culture who identifies as a devout Muslim and argues against ‘white feminism’. The most common variant is typically the personally promiscuous and/or alcohol-drinking man from a chaste, sober religious subculture who nevertheless believes he is strongly following the rules he clearly does not care for, and yet judges those who also do not care for them as an outsider.

I don't buy into that standard but I do think there is a cult. It is just a general problem than only one that relates to Trump that applies to many politicians, or even broader political factions or groups.

Making it all about Trump makes it seem that politics is separated between the bad orange man and superior other elites, or Trump cultists and then people who care about expertise when actually politics and political discourse is full of fanatics, actual shills who actually get paid to promote certain agendas, and shit politicians. Politicians doing what people who pay for them want over what is good for their country is actually a worse form of corruption than this which it self is a bad thing.

When Trump's problem's are not unique that much and he exemplifies much of what is bad about politics as usual and the establishment right. Even if he has some areas that he is better and others like this which he might be worse than a Romney figure. This is to say, Trump is not the worst thing ever nor the savior.

I don't like the impersonal process-oriented bureaucracy, the expert elite, the oligarchy behind democracy, whatever you call it. They are hypocritical, corrupt, dysfunctional, whatever else. But they're not infinitely that. Society still more or less works. If

Acting as if this means that society no longer works and is worse than what other oligarchs do, well, you haven't really justified this.

Whether it is supporting BLM, their fanatical enormous nation destroying racism, their gigantic incompetence on issues relating to their generally culturally far left viewpoint and even outside of just that as it happened with California fires, mass migration, totalitarianism and making dissent to their false narratives (enabling further predation) a crime or censorship, promoting false views such as lab leak = conspiracy theory (which I believe you have also done and been highly critical of dissenters), oppressing opposition, enormous corruption, the take over of influence by far left NGOs, intelligence services, Jewish lobby which of course results in enormous corruption and redirection of resources and two tier society, and a lot other stuff. Neither California, nor Biden regime, not the neocon/liberal elites are representative of a less corrupt, more competent way to govern.

It isn't as if Trump is actually sufficiently good on any of these, but the "expert elite" do not exist. Corruption, stealing money, insane ideology. Any experts are not representative of elites and it devalues the concept of expertise to associate it with them.

Actually I don't see how this approach to praise the alternative as elite experts and take it as a given that this proves Trump is the epitome of corruption is any less cultist than the kind of Trump supporter who always supports Trump even if as he betrays the principles that would make him more enticing figure than establishment as usual. Trump is converging quite a lot with the neocon establishment in fact even if his domestic policy isn't going to be as bad as Kamala's.

Anyway, this is pretty scummy from Trump to do since the coin is eventually going to go down and is pure speculation at best, and the guy deserves a backlash for this.But your framing is making it to the benefit of something even worse. Is Biden's history of corruption and enrichment better? Not really. Is promoting crypto speculation and a coin of his own the kind of thing that is such a morally depraved act that puts the corrupt establishment as automatically superior as you present it? No, because even with Trump and certainly even with the corrupt establishment, there are worse things than this.

The cult that is in favor of the dominant faction of elites, ideologues that marched on institutions (which includes donors who by buying politicians get their agenda through) is not a superior alternative to Trump's cult. Actually there seems to be some crossover, I don't buy into the myth of Trump phenomenon being at least today completely separate. It would be better to reject both cults and to hold politicians accountable. Rejecting the myth of their good nature, expertise, and automatically correct instincts.

I don't really like "crypto" as a whole. Most of it is scammy. Like this pre-mined centralized shitcoin.

I thought a bitcoin reserve was a somewhat sensible idea (I'm biased as an owner) but of course with Trump this is what we're gonna get instead. Btc (no pre-mine) gets lumped in with the scams.

As you say this might be bad in the longer term - the next democratic admin will likely crack down on it. Btc will get regulated to hell with the rest of it, setting the stage for central bank digital currency to take over. A dystopian thing.

... look, if I wanted to see posts like this, there are hundreds of thousands of them on crypto twitter. I come here for a higher standard of quality, and your post probably breaks the 'low effort' rule.

Ok, removed.

put a small amount $ in. this way if it crashes you will feel good about not having put more, but if it goes up, all good.

I'm curious what strategy Trump is ultimately going for here. On the surface it looks like a power move to demonstrate that he is in charge and nobody can stop him from pulling off these types of shenanigans.

Is he really just after the money and/or getting revenge at people that have wronged him in the past?

Actions like these really decrease trust in the economic and political system. It fuels beliefs that there is no point in working hard to get ahead. Why should anyone work hard when you can make more money by monitoring social media and being early to the next viral momentum trade? It also causes you to lose trust in democracy. We are voting for people who are personally enriching themselves at our expense.

This also leads us to a slippery slope. If Trump is allowed to do this then what's stopping him from doing things like telling China he won't introduce new tariffs if they buy $1B of his memecoin?

There is probably some deeper lesson about how when social media content creators have a mechanism to monetize attention it results in unregulated negative externalities.

This also leads us to a slippery slope. If Trump is allowed to do this then what's stopping him from doing things like telling China he won't introduce new tariffs if they buy $1B of his memecoin?

Not much and his supporters would probably think that was the best thing ever. I also doubt he'd be impeached, he'd just say it was a joke.

If Trump is allowed to do this then what's stopping him from doing things like telling China he won't introduce new tariffs if they buy $1B of his memecoin?

Impeachment. That’s literally it. You can’t say the people didn’t vote for this. The opinion in Trump v United States came out well before the election.

Well, it was clearly correct to not be going after sitting presidents, at the very least, and he could pardon himself, so Trump v United States isn't all that relevant to this analysis.

After Trump University, Trump Coins (physical), Trump Trading Cards, Trump Media Stock, and whatever the hell this is, I would have expected Trump scam market saturation. At some point it becomes more useful to model it as a form of tithing than con artistry. The people buying this junk must be getting some form of utility out of it, even if it confounds the sophisticated mind.

At some point it becomes more useful to model it as a form of tithing than con artistry. The people buying this junk must be getting some form of utility out of it, even if it confounds the sophisticated mind.

During the 2021 short squeeze of GameStop, some people bought stock not caring whether they came out ahead, considering the entire amount they had spent on it to be a fair price to strike back at the Wall Street investors whom they blamed for 2008. ("It's not about the money; it's about sending a message.")

Someone who feels ill-used by the Very Serious People in establishment politics might very well purchase the items in question thinking not "This has a good chance of being profitable." so much as "You bastards ruined my life and then had the gall to blame me and say I deserved it. F%*# you, I'll give money to the guy you hate."

Fine but that can just as easily be achieved by donating to whatever Trump/Trumpian candidate or PAC.

crypto is $4 trillion total market cap. $5 billion market cap for $trump is still tiny. Rather than saturation, it's more like $ from other coins shifting into $Trump. You can see this by how altcoins have all fallen except $SOL and $Trump.

IMO memecoins are significantly worse than expensive collectibles because they allow, and the community encourages, normal people who aren't that smart or careful with their money to put in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions into these coins, and then to attempt to dump your bags on other people who are more gullible and less quick before the price drops. And the creator's taking a cut of all that.

I'm old enough to have watched women throw away many thousands of dollars of beanie babies and tens of thousands of dollars of llamas.
That reminds me, need to check if the alpaca bubble burst yet, or if the Tranch's alpacacaust was an isolated incident.

except for MTG cards, collectibles are probably worse due to carry costs. Crypto has no carry. But they both tend to be bad. There tons of stories of people who drudge up their collectibles only to learn they are appraised for nothing or are unable to sell them. With crypto at least there is a market where everyone gets the same price, and much better liquidity. That urn may have been appraised for $1000, but no one will buy it or you may only get $800 after fees. Many items at auction houses go unsold due to reserve not being met or no bidders.

As a straight investment, maybe, but who is buying this stuff as a straight investment? Collectibles have the advantage of having intrinsic utility that these meme coins don't. In the 1980s my mother was gifted a series of limited edition Norman Rockwell commemorative plates that would supposedly increase exponentially in value over the years. They didn't, but they were displayed in my parents' dining room for at least 30 years. I don't think Trump Coin or whatever has that kind of value.

Collectibles have the advantage of having intrinsic utility that these meme coins don't.

They don't have intrinsic utility, they have whatever utility is the the eye of the beholder. You can't display your weird crypto in the living room, but if it brings a smile to your face when you see it, is that not utility? Conversely, if you don't enjoy having some plates in the living room, do they actually have any utility? I think that this sort of thing is very much a matter of personal taste and perspective. I would get no pleasure whatsoever in owning Trump coin, but I can imagine that some people might.

If the plates cost $1000 and you can eat from them that is like $5 of utility vs. a $995 loss. The vast majority of collectibles have no utility, because to remain valuable they cannot be used. many cannot even be displayed for fear of being stolen or breaking. MTG cards again being a notable exception to this which offer gameplay utility.

Now I'm curious: do you think Trump MTG cards would be net-good or net-bad for Hasbro? A lot of MTG players would be quite angry, but it would also definitely attract new people.

I can't wait for the new mechanics.

Bluewalk -- creature is unblockable as long as defending player controls a blue state
"Viva la Raza!"

Teflon -- when this creature is the target of a spell or ability, nullify its effect and place a +0/+1 on this creature
"He can't keep getting away with it!"

Deep Statesmanship -- during your turn, when this creature would be destroyed, instead tap it, remove it from combat, and heal all damage to it
"They know. Shut it down."

In the age of custom card sites, proxy printers, and stable diffusion, we're long overdue for a spiritual successor to the Illuminati card game.

You missed a trick.

Trumple -- This creature can deal excess combat damage to a player, planeswalker or battle it's blocking.
"The Trump Curse claims another victim!"

...bonus points for the best design for a creature with Trample, Tromple and Trumple.

Dang, I was trying to think of a spin on Trample. Nice.

Teflon is very strong, it's like a better Shroud.

It depends on what "nullify" exactly means, rules-wise. It could be strictly better shroud, though the situations on which it's better are so narrow as to be basically the same, but if "nullify" means "counter" then it's a weird ward: very strong, but symmetrical.

Shroud is also symmetrical, hexproof is the non symmetrical version of that.

More comments

Please provide a pitch deck in next week's Tinker Tuesday.

I'm going to play the biggest creature. No one's ever had such big numbers before!

No one's ever had such big numbers before!

By magnitude, or by font size? (Late Show with Stephen Colbert, April 2016)

To toot my horn, it looks like my thesis from 2 months age was correct https://www.themotte.org/post/1215/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/260850?context=8#context

DJT stock stock being worth $4-7 billion despite meager earnings was not wholly irrational, as I had pointed out, due to the ability of Trump to leverage his branding in ways that short-sellers and other skeptics were overlooking, at virtually no cost to DJT. And now in the span of 4 hours Trump created $5+ billion out of thin air--just with a tweet (and a post on Truth Social) promoting his new coin. No $ spent on advertising.

Presumably, some of this $ will go to Trump Media. So in hindsight, DJT stock was not so overvalued. Trump can print money at will. His brand today is way bigger compared to in the '90s-2000s, when his companies regularly went bankrupt and his failures made for late night fodder. The assumption was DJT would be a repeat of that. You're not smarter than the market. Or at least to be smarter than the market, it cannot be obvious. A year ago it seemed so obvious that DJT was worthless or would be soon, and now this. If a narrative seems too obvious or easy, there is likely something you're missing. Wall St. does not like to give money away.

Moreover, this is why you should never bet against Trump the person. Like DJT stock, $Trump has defied the typical 'pump and dump' trajectory seen in other meme coins, like Hawk Tuah's coin, which imploded to zero right from the gate. But $Trump went up 1000x steadily after it began trading--the opposite trajectory. Trump, like Elon, is truly the master of defying what is possible, or doing the impossible. The usual rules do not apply to them. Throw out your preconceived notions. No pump and dump when it comes to $Trump--the gains hold.

However, I predict his presidency will fall short of the expectations of some of his supporters, similar to his first term , such as no crypto reserve legislation, and being stonewalled by legal problems and Congress. So I am bearish on the Trump presidency, but bullish on Trump as a brand, the political ambitions of his children, and Trumpism as a force of politics even if it does not change society that much.

People that buy stocks, or coins, are motivated by psychological factors, or false conclusions and aren't necessarily buying based on accurate understanding of their value. Like the expectation that X will keep going up and fear of missing out. The market has always throughout history even as far as hundreds of years ago included speculation and bubbles in it. At any given point market gets some prices wrong. But on the long term the market is wiser. Unless the bubble will go on infinitely, which it won't, stocks and coins which have a grossly inflated value over their fundamentals will have their price go down. People have made plenty of money in bubbles while they have also lost plenty of money after it came crushing down.

If someone wants to get rich by engaging in speculation with DJT stock, or coins, it might even work for a time. But it is still speculation, and it is still the reasonable expectation that the price will crush down eventually. Who knows, like the Hawk Tua girl, with the coin it might even happen soon enough that you won't make money. Or it being DJT has more staying power and those who speculate might become rich if they leave after a point.

It is still speculation though and if anyone wants to do that then speculate away. Just accept the risks.

Moreover, this is why you should never bet against Trump the person. Like DJT stock, $Trump has defied the typical 'pump and dump' trajectory seen in other meme coins, like Hawk Tuah's coin, which imploded to zero right from the gate. But $Trump went up 1000x steadily after it began trading--the opposite trajectory. Trump, like Elon, is truly the master of defying what is possible, or doing the impossible. The usual rules do not apply to them. Throw out your preconceived notions. No pump and dump when it comes to $Trump--the gains hold.

Rules don't apply is just wishful thinking. It is possible that with Trump there might be a bigger speculation window. Plenty of bubbles have happened for years at times.

What you are saying about the market being wise based on current prices and rules not applying is really the philosophy of the greedy investor in a bubble and this perspective has always been proven to be wrong. This doesn't mean that someone who speculates with this coin will not make money for a time. It just means that what we know about markets tell us that the price will go down at some point. Predicting exactly when that will happen is pretty tough.

To the extend prices are mostly based on psychology, of course that can and will change. For various factors like the end of Trump's presidency or him actually dying. Or who knows, like with hawk tua coin, people might think to sell it because of these factors and the decline happens during Trump's presidency. Or maybe it happens sooner. Who even knows.

Yeah, this is really bad.

Is it though? His base will never leave him so long as he dunks on the libs, no matter how much he scams them.

I care about things besides his level of electoral support.

it makes him look worse to those who already didn't like him--so it's bad in that sense.

No, it's bad in the sense that it's evil to scam the people who trust you.

But if they kind of like being scammed and experience this interaction with Trump as enjoyable, is it really evil? I would describe it as totally cretinous myself.

the price keeps going up. the performance is better than 99% of 'legit' coins . sure it can crash, but this is true again of legit coins. Trump is savvy enough to play into this demand. he stuck to his pledge in 2024 of not selling DJT stock.

This is somewhat tangential but is now a good time to buy Sol then? If the president himself is shilling it, it seems like a good buy

no, too risky and missed the train. Crypto has very high beta with the stock market, no alpha anymore.

Bummer. I miss all the trains!

Consider any other altcoin, however- bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, monero.

By the time you've heard of a memecoin, when you buy, you've probably already lost.

The price of the Trump shitcoin has doubled since you said this.

I already have FOMO

The minute, or hour, after he posted it was definitely a good time to buy SOL. Now ... probably still is a good time, but not necessarily because of Trump, more because the momentum in the crypto ecosystem seems to be behind it.

But this entire exercise illustrates how, IMO, speculative cryptocurrency trading is a negative sum, socially useless activity that should be at least shameful, if not illegal. Your profit on SOL or BTC isn't coming from 'transforming the financial system', it's coming from the kind of people who are buying Trumpcoin. That's not to say that cryptocurrency overall is bad, blockchains are cool and the current crypto financial system has a lot of advantages over tradfi by virtue of being native to modern tech, but that doesn't justify the speculation.

A good 2% of world GDP goes into negative sum, 'socially useless' military spending. Just because something is socially useless it doesn't follow that it's wise or practical to do away with it.

Military spending acts as a deterrent and to enforce American interests abroad, so it's worthwhile even if unused .

"Russian and Chinese military spending does the opposite" says the hippy "and all we get are these retarded wars and megadeaths that grind on for years where almost nobody gets what they want and everyone pays a shockingly high price. Why can't we all just get along?"

There are a bunch of complex reasons why we can't get along probably rooted in the human condition and likewise there are complex reasons why people want to speculate or do things that aren't strictly rational or productive. I feel no desire towards Bulgari handbags but I don't think 'these should be banned because they're socially useless moneysinks that unworthy organizations use to make money they shouldn't really have because they make these things high-status'. Let people enjoy things.

I don't understand your argument - military spending isn't socially useless because you'd get invaded if you didn't do it, it's directly useful for the security of the world. There's no action we could take to get to a 'better' world without military spending. (Also, power and the ability to use force are good.) Whereas you could just ban crypto.

Yes but in 'theory' everyone could cut military spending to zero and not have to worry about being invaded. But that's obviously not practical.

Likewise banning crypto would be impractical for the same reason that banning stocks in the 18th century was also impractical. Speculation occurred. There were dangerous bubbles that caused serious economic problems. But there were advantages in having liquidity and a developed financial system. Crypto also performs various important functions that aren't fully understood by anyone right now, like stocks back then. Fast global transactions, cheap and secure storage of wealth, recordkeeping, smart contracts...

Crypto as a currency? Cool. (But most are impractically slow and expensive for that).

Crypto as a tool? Cool. (Whatever Polymarket does)

Crypto as gambling/speculation? Very much a bad thing.

Of course, the whole space will fall apart when quantum computing is achieved, and the cryptograpy is broken. Who knows how long that will be, though.

At least investments, even shitty crypto ones, can go up. Better than 'all or nothing' things like sports betting.

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