This won’t be popular in crypto circles, but someone has to say it: the incoming president launching a crypto memecoin (raking in billions of dollars) is not only unethical but also an industry-wide humiliation.
I, and many others in this industry, joined to fix a broken financial system—paper checks, predatory fees, near-zero interest rates, high inflation, and absurd cross-border costs. We wanted to do for money what the internet did for communication: cut out the middlemen, remove friction, and let people move value freely. A small business in Argentina should be able to save in stablecoins. A creator in Bangladesh should get paid, not fleeced. Concepts like programmable money and provable digital ownership were supposed to be the innovations of the next decade.
Instead, we got ICO scams, NFT rug pulls, exchange implosions, unregulated gambling, and now a freaking presidential meme coin. These gimmicks gave the industry a sleazy, scammy vibe and limitless ammunition for Operation Chokepoint 2.0 and frivolous SEC lawsuits that wiped out value, drove builders overseas, triggered mass layoffs, and shattered trust. And we handed them the moral authority to proceed unabated.
So we created Stand With Crypto to tell our narrative, that focused on crypto’s real benefits—economic inclusion, financial freedom, job creation. That message rallied 2 million members and raised hundreds of millions to push pro-innovation policy. Policymakers were finally working with us, not against us. Draft bills were in play. Public sentiment was shifting. We were on track for a 2025 super cycle.
Then came $TRUMP.
Beyond the ethical nightmare, it’s the moment that has made the crypto into a clown show. Millions who were starting to warm up to crypto are now either suspicious or completely turned off—thanks to this own-goal by our industry.
And no, this isn’t some watershed moment for mainstream adoption, nor what a "global onchain economy" looks like. A group of insiders, supported by a degen / bot army to pump-and-dump at the expense of Retail investors is the same extractive, get-rich-quick mentality that’s poisoned crypto from the start. We spent years rebuilding trust after FTX, and in one weekend, we handed the critics a flamethrower.
We created crypto to fix a broken financial system—not to turn it into a carnival where the ringmaster is the leader of the free world.
This is the line. Either we act like adults and build real utility for real adoption that prove crypto’s worth, or we keep churning out predatory, puerile bullshit.
If we choose wrong, we won’t need regulators or skeptics to sabotage crypto’s future—we’ll do it ourselves.
