View this email in your browser

Because Donald Trump's crypto projects aren't uniquely valuable – World Liberty Financial serves as a wrapper around other projects and TRUMP exists only as a memecoin – it's important for us to ask why rational investors would choose these tokens as their investments.

Justin Sun's investment has brought him closer to the president and he hopes the new administration's stance towards crypto enforcement will solve irritating Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) problems. He'll also be hoping it leads to an increase in value for the projects he is affiliated with.

However, Sun isn't the only investor who's found this project appealing, and recently Reuters was able to track down several other important cryptocurrency figures who find this to be an appealing investment, presumably for somewhat different reasons than Sun.

Tom Murray, a crypto entrepreneur who settled a case with the SEC last year, noted that he "was curious about the legal structure they set up around selling the tokens, and once I had gotten through all the steps I kind of figured, why not?"

Among the others was Mike Dudas, founder of cryptocurrency media outlet The Block and crypto venture capital firm 6th Man Ventures. He noted that he believes it will "appreciate greatly in value," and this belief is rooted in the idea that "a Trump DeFi company can be worth very much."

I guess that is why most folks make investments, buy low, sell high am I right?

This begs the question is World Liberty Financial really "Decentralized" and if it's not, can it be considered a "DeFi company."

One fact that should feature in that assessment is that Donald Trump received more tokens than are being sold to the public and receives 75% of revenue from the protocol.

Regardless, it's not clear to me why a Trump company that wraps AAVE would have unique value, but I tend to miss the boat in crypto. Hey, I thought Harris was going to win!

Sigil Fund, whose anonymous CIO invested in this project, apparently told Reuters that the decision was driven, at least in part, by the fact that this project is "directly connected to our new crypto president Donald Trump."

Is it ethical for funds to be able to buy into assets that are "directly connected to our new crypto president Donald Trump"? No, it's not.

However, I do think it is worth noting that all these investors (exempting Sun) invested relatively small amounts. Under $200,000 in all three cases discussed above. This is an amount of money that may seem worth it to these folks to buy something "directly connected to our new crypto president" that has at least a chance of "appreciating greatly in value."

Even if they lose their entire investment, they can hope to evade the Commander in Chief's retribution list, as he frequently threatens illegal retribution against his enemies. The greater ethical violation here is, of course, the president, who cannot stop profiting from his role as president.

Audio is back! ▶️

Play our coverage in-article, on our homepage, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get more news with Protos Live 🔴

News and insights from across the web, curated for you by the Protos newsroom.

In other news:

Trump-endorsed World Liberty Financial buys Justin Sun tokens

No one say quid pro quo, it was a perfect series of related party transactions between a plagiarist being sued by the SEC and a president going for a high score on conflicts of interest.