Donald Trump Junior may be planning to reform banking through DeFi

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is undoubtedly the future of finance, much like internet news is the future of communication. Donald Trump’s eldest son, Don Junior, seems to have recognized that.

It’s hard to admit, but when it comes to crypto, the most intriguing news often comes from the murky corners. While Donald Trump himself is cozying up to the Bitcoin scene with plans for a strategic reserve, his eldest son, Donald Trump Junior, is enticing the crypto industry with vague but unbelievably fascinating ambitions.

On August 8th, Don Junior, who has been leading the Trump Organization since his father’s presidency, held a sort of digital press conference. During this, he was asked about his crypto plans, specifically whether he would launch a memecoin like MAGA (TRUMP) or Restore the Republic (RTR). The anticipation was high because his younger brother, Eric Trump, had previously tweeted that he had „fallen in love with crypto/DeFi. Get ready for a big announcement“ – leading the audience to expect another shitcoin.

Don Junior responded:

No, we’re talking about a bigger kind of platform, not … – it’s completely different, it’s not a memecoin we’re talking about. We still need some time, but what we want to do is take over a large part of the banking world. I think there are a lot of inequalities, only certain people get financial services, only certain people can do these kinds of things. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is obviously very attractive for people like me, who have been debanked. So that everyone is able to get insurance, get jobs … I think that’s a big thing we can talk about.

Unfortunately, he did not say more. The statement is concrete enough to spark the imagination but so vague that one can only speculate wildly. If the next president – or his son – were to actually try to replace parts of the banking world with DeFi, it would be a huge, a gigantic thing.

„Decentralized Finance“ (DeFi), this broad term often disparaged as „voodoo tokenomics,“ encompasses numerous financial services, transactions, exchanges, loans, derivatives, and more. DeFi decentralizes and democratizes these services, removing barriers for some users and allowing others to share in the profits that banks typically scoop up, making everything transparent down to the last detail.

DeFi cannot replace many banking tasks, but when done right, it can make a significant part of them more efficient, cheaper, fairer, more accessible, safer, and more transparent. DeFi is governed by Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), which represent the consistent evolution of traditional organizations and seem like a logical next step towards a better future, especially in finance and transnational corporations. As we’ve been saying for a long time, it would be a big disappointment if in a few decades, at least one organization hadn’t become a DAO. There is, for example, no plausible reason why organizations like WWF are not yet DAOs.

That Don Junior, as president of the Trump Organization and son of a former and possibly future president, complains about inequality and claims to have been „debanked“ – punished by banks by withdrawing services – should be seen more as irony, perhaps even cynicism.

However, the specific DeFi plans of the Trumps remain vague. Likewise, who will be the next US president remains unclear. On Polymarket, the major prediction market, Biden had been far behind, and a second Trump presidency seemed inevitable. However, the nomination of Kamala Harris has changed the game. According to Polymarket, the Democrat now has slightly better odds at 52 percent, compared to Trump’s 45 percent.

The situation looks similar for the relevant memecoins. MAGA, TRUMPCOIN, RTR – all have lost significant value over the past month. Whether they lost value because they are, Trump or not, meme or shitcoins that remain worthless even with a Trump victory, or because Donald Trump’s prospects dimmed, is up for debate.

What is clear is that there has never been a campaign in world history where Bitcoin and crypto were so present. And for that, one can be thankful to Trump, whether one finds him awful or merely terrible.