The Trump boys have been teasing a mysterious crypto project and, now, they have finally unveiled it. Well, sort of. Actually, it’s still not totally clear what the heck it is, though we now know the name of it, at least.
On Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. announced “The DeFiant Ones,” a new “crypto platform” that will help people do…uh, well that part isn’t entirely clear yet. On X, Don Jr. linked to a Telegram page, where updates about “The DeFiant Ones” will be shared in the imminent future. From everything we’ve heard so far, the platform sounds vaguely like a crypto exchange. But that’s just a guess. There’s scant information as to what the Trump boys are actually up to. All we have is the project’s hashtag: #bedefiant. Real cool, guys.
In a previous interview with the New York Post, Eric Trump described crypto as “digital real estate,” and claimed that decentralized finance could help lower-income Americans tap into the financial sector: “Essentially over half this country right now cannot be banked,” he said. “Meaning they will be rejected for most loans from most institutions. But with this technology, they could have the ability to almost instantaneously be approved or denied from a lender based on math, not policy. Money could be in their account in minutes, not months.”
The Block previously noted that, in July, trademark applications were filed for the catchphrase “Be DeFiant,” along with “World Liberty,” and “World Liberty Financial.” Those applications were filed by a company called AMG Software Solutions. One of the trademarks, World Liberty Financial, would involve “providing financial information in the field of decentralized finance (DeFi).”
Trump, who—despite the growing alliance between his campaign and the crypto industry—has so far demonstrated a limited grasp over what decentralized finance actually is, helped his boys promote the project Thursday, posting about it briefly on Truth Social. “For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites,” said Trump, a financial elite, who has helped big banks and other elites squeeze average Americans. “It’s time we take a stand—together,” he added, sharing a link to his sons’ crypto project.
How a decentralized finance project is going to help average Americans not be “squeezed” economically is unclear. I’d hazard a guess that it won’t do that and, if anything, the project will crash and burn after its political usefulness has waned.
“Over the next few days, we’ll be sharing some important updates and announcements right here in this channel,” said Don Jr., in a post on Telegram. Okay, great. Wake me up when those updates include a full description of your platform.