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Trump's Crony Crypto Corruption · IndieNewsNow LIVE! Clips

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Who are these people?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm going to cover a story from another outlet I like a lot.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sludge, a two-person outlet, completely user-funded, totally independent.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: They focus a little bit on electoral politics, but they cover the money.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: They follow the money, which is what I like.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: ReadSludge.com.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: David Moore is one of the two guys.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so this story is that Trump convenes a White House crypto meeting.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Shout out to our friend, Golden Monarch, who constantly...
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Rails about how bad crypto is and anyone who touches it is potentially compromised
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: or should know better.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: White House convenes White House crypto meeting with his own business partners.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now we know and we've been talking
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: about just how much grifting Trump himself has been doing
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: in launching his own meme coin.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: In launching a stablecoin,
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: in taking all of the regulations off of a lot of the regulations off of crypto
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: and dropping a lot of the lawsuits that were going out against people
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: who were grifty.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So what, again,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: David says here is that many of the companies at today's White House meeting were
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: in business with the president's or his son's crypto ventures and
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: or have donated millions to Trump's PACs.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is complete conflict of interest.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Many of the companies are connected to President or his business, right?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So let's look at this.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: President Trump gathered cryptocurrency executives,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: crypto lobbyists,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: and their federal regulators at the White House on Wednesday
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: to advance policies benefiting an industry that's become a major source of income
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: for his family,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: including companies that directly do business with his crypto ventures.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Remember that these are also guys that fund a lot of the super PACs and campaigns
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: for a lot of the congresspeople as well.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Today's session preceded the inaugural meeting of
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: the Consumer Financial Trade Commission's Innovation Advisory Committee, or IAC,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: to be held on Thursday,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: which is a 35-member body,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: which includes not only crypto titans,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: but also prediction market companies with financial ties to Donald Trump Jr.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's Kalshi, and that is Polymarket.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Many of the companies at today's meeting have made large donations to
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: his Super PAC MAGA Inc.,
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: or to the White House Ballroom Project that's one of the president's top priorities.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get into receipts.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: According to an item in Semaphore,
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: the White House meeting that day included CFTC Chair Mike Selig,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: SEC Chair Paul Atkins,
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: and top crypto advisor Patrick Witt,
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: who leads the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: I believe, what's his name?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Andreessen is on that as well.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Companies attending included Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Chainlink,
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Andreessen Horowitz,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: their venture capital company,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Paradigm, NASDAQ,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: and the Intercontinental Exchange,
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: along with trade associations,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: the Digital Chamber,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: the Crypto Council for Innovation, and the Blockchain Association.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Those are lobbying organizations.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Lobbyists, massive funders, And their regulators all sitting down for a nice little chat.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Prediction market companies like Kalshi had been expected to participate in
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: the early get-together,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: but were dropped to avoid bad optics after
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: a White House teleprompter operator allegedly placed bets on
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: the platform around Trump's speeches.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like we had talked about when we read Whitney's article,
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Whitney Webb at Unlimited Hangouts article about the origins of Calci
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: and its direct links to DARPA and CIA.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: The slippery slope that people in the White House could easily,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: with advanced knowledge,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: pick up the phone and place bets on these prediction markets and profit wildly.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Which is exactly what appears to have happened.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: From a teleprompter operator.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Kalshi, Polymarket,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: and Gambling Companies like DraftKings and FanDuel will still take part
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: in tomorrow's IAC meeting.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because remember, the President's son has staken them too.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: The IAC's inaugural agenda opens with crypto's regulatory evolution from uncertainty to clarity.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Again, Golden Monarch I'm sure is being triggered right now.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And comes as the crypto industry's Uncertainty to clarity
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: about how do we get this bill across the finish line?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Who do we need to bribe?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Who do we need to convince?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Who do we need to pay off?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: What foundation is going to need to be greased in order to get this congressperson
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: to sign off and join the signatories to this act and not say no?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they're looking for in this conference.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: The major crypto market structure bill passed the House
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: in July 2025 has been stalled in the Senate as lawmakers consider opposition from
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: the bank lobby over stablecoin rewards,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: tumbled over ethics provisions for the president's crypto ventures,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And a tight Senate calendar before the midterms.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you got three things.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: On top of the fact that Lindsey Graham's dead.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now he's been replaced.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And his sister has already said she's fine with whatever they want to do.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: But Mitch McConnell, we know what's going on there.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: He ain't showing up to vote on this shit.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Majority leader,
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: the guy who took over for McConnell,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: John Thune,
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: filed cloture on the Clarity Act before the August recess,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: teeing up a September 15th vote on whether to advance the landmark bill.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: But right now,
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: a key group of Senate Democrats express dissatisfaction with ethics language
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: that they argue would fail to constrain Trump's crypto self-enrichment,
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: which is exactly what they want.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans want that.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: The Senate Democrats basically need to be bought off in some other way to allow this
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: to be funded as well,
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: because they know that from 2028,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: come the time that they have a Senate candidate or a presidential candidate
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: that wants to have a crypto venture, they'll want to allow the same.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: With legislation stuck in the Senate,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: the admin is getting behind the industry's push for lighter federal oversight.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's through regulatory actions at the SEC and CFTC,
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: while simultaneously calling for the Senate to pass the Clarity Act,
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: handing that organization,
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: the Consumer Financial Trade Commission,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: even greater jurisdiction over digital assets.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, Trump appoints the head of the CFTC.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, they can completely rig this.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: This week,
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: the SEC released its first formal rulemaking proposal for crypto under
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: the second Trump admin,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: titled Regulation Crypto Assets,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: a framework that would preempt certain state rules on securities regulation,
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: among other things.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: I thought these guys were all about states' rights.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: So again, Selig,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: who became the chair in December,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: is currently the sole commissioner of the Consumer Financial Trade Commission,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: an agency which by design has five commissioners, no more than three from one party.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: But...
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: He formerly worked at law firms representing clients such
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: as Crypto Investor Paradigm and the Blockchain Association so that
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: the CFTC is moving to oversee and deliver what he called the minimum effective dose
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: of regulation.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to take the cops off the beat and let them investigate
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: and regulate themselves and let them find no wrongdoing.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: In May, his agency moved to vacate a judgment against crypto exchange Gemini,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: again founded by, guess who?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Trump donors, the Winklevoss twins.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: The Winklevi, as they were
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: referred to in the social network.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hosting an event at the White House specifically for members of
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: an industry that's also being regulated by
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: the White House raises ethics appearance concerns,
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: says a senior legal counsel for ethics at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Historically,
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: presidents were advised to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: when carrying out their duties in office.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: However,
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: presidents are not subject to the criminal conflict of interest laws
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: and therefore cannot face possible prosecution for engaging in the behavior
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: that raises appearance concerns.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: I swear, this is the shit Steve Bannon talked about in 2016 that they should have done.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're just doing it now in the second part of the second term once the midterms are done.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And basically he's won,
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: he's run his last election and there's nothing left for him to squeeze out.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then he's going to dance over to run and be the lifetime president of the Board
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: of Peace with tons of money in the bank to play with there too.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Chainlink attending today.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Announced its integration with
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: the Trump family's World Liberty Financial stablecoin USD1 in May of last year,
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: which again uses its cross-chain interoperability protocol,
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: bunch of bullshit, to traverse blockchains.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: The technical partnership was touted on stage at the blockchain event Consensus 2025.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: I swear these guys just circle jerk all over each other.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: By World Liberty Financial's Zach Witkoff.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, his dad is negotiating alongside fucking Kushner.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is so incestuous, all of this.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and Eric Trump.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, brother-in-law to the guy negotiating alongside Zach Witkoff's dad.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: The entire fucking Gaza thing.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: On May 1st, 2025,
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: USD1 was announced as the vehicle for the Abu Dhabi fund MGX to invest $2 billion
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: in crypto exchange finance.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: That was the trip.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: We covered this on how did we miss that,
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: me and Reef,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: when Trump and all the business people flew over to Saudi Arabia
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: and did not take any of the corporate press with them at all.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Crazy.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that was very clear.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then right after they did that,
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: the prosecution against CZ,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: the guy who founded Binance, that got dropped by the Justice Department.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Huh, how about that?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Coinbase, the largest U.S.-based crypto exchange, added USD1 in August of 2025.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: That makes its corrupt and complicit and also listed World Liberty Financial's governance token.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: World Liberty recently hired Ryan Ballantyne,
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: who formerly led corporate client strategy at Coinbase Institutional.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Again, incestuous nonsense.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now he's chief business officer at USD1.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Earlier this year,
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: a CoinDesk investigation showed that World Liberty Financial used $5 billion
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: of its own tokens as collateral for $75 million in stablecoins.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Which, with much of that sum, apparently then moving to Coinbase Prime, a brokerage platform.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, they're just robbing Peter to pay Paul, making up money along the way.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we're going to issue $75 million...
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Against what?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's no money behind all this.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's no there there.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then, oh,
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I got the Saudis to commit $2 billion into a fund,
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: so now they can spread that around
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: into all these different little shadow organizations,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: making it impossible for regulators to keep up and for people who are trying
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: to just invest to figure out what the hell's going on here.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: My answer?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Stay the fuck away from all of this.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a total grift.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: A total grift.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: All of it.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Coinbase donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: acknowledged donating last year to the Ballroom Project,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: and donated, of course, to the America 250 initiative.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Mentioned as a sponsor during the U.S. Army Parade.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, the military thing that happened during Trump's birthday, I believe.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Either that or the one where they had a thing on July 4th with the fireworks
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: that got almost rained out.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: That was crazy.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Kraken listed the Trump meme coin just a day after its launch.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: You mean the rug pulled coin?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: In January of 2025, currently lists both USD1 and the governance token.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Its parent company,
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know that Payward was the parent company of Kraken,
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: gave a million dollars to the inaugural,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: co-founder Jesse Powell got on board,
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: and he donated at least $845,000 to Trump's campaign in June of 2024,
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: during the presidential year.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then last year,
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: their co-CEO put another $2 million donation to the crypto groups aligned with
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: the deregulatory agenda.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's the lobbying groups.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: So this is another way that they hide and funnel the money.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have to give it all directly to him.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: They can give it to a lobbying organization that then spreads it around to all of his people.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is how this is all done.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump Jr., of course, is entwined with IAC.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Again, that's the crypto conference in general.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Their prediction market members would...
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've covered this at length here.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Descent in Bloom has also talked about this.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: In January of 2025,
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Trump Jr.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: was named as strategic advisor to Kalshi,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: later joined the advisory board of rival Polymarket.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: How that is legal and allowed and how both of them are cool with that,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: well, they must all be in cahoots together then.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's what at that point?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: The latter received an investment last year from 1789 Capital.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Again, see Descent in Bloom's article about that.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: The venture capital firm where Trump Jr. became a partner shortly after the 2024 election.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Funded partly by Peter Thiel and Rebecca Mercer and a bunch of other people too.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if Thiel's actually involved now that I think about it.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of other people.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Rockbridge Network of people.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: The stake was picked up when Polymarket was valued at just $300 million.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's worth billions, $15 billion, right?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: So now their stake has gone up by what, 50 times?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: 500 times a rise that came after the CFTC approved a regulatory path for Polymarket
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: to operate in the United States.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Again, remember who runs the CFTC?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: A guy who's in bed with crypto.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: So then we get back to this article from Sludge.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Some of today's meeting attendees have been overlapping investments tied
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: to Trump Jr. Andreessen Horowitz helped lead a funding round for Kalshi last year.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Paradigm also made multiple investments in Kalshi.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Then you have Marc Andreessen, who also is the principal funder for Substack, A16Z.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Was a top Trump campaign backer,
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: giving more than $5.3 million and has continued to give millions to MAGA Inc.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: During this cycle, among other hefty donations stemming from his firm.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Again, he got a seat on some crypto or some AI board, I remember.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Again, they're going into person-by-person crypto.com guy.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: International Exchange made a $2 billion commitment to Polymarket last year.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And its subsidiary, NYSE Texas, listed TMTG.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, that's the dollar sign Trump stock, Trump Media, as its first company.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's frightening.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because that company's made no money.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: The Trump,
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: the dollar sign DJT on the stock market is the biggest grift in the history of
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: the stock market.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: They have no earnings.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: He and his wife, this guy, oh, Kelly Loeffler, you remember her?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: She was a senator at one point from Georgia.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And she lost her seat to Jonathan Ossoff, I believe.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: But her husband runs the New York Stock Exchange.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Jeffrey Sprecher,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: who runs CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, gave $5 million to Trump Super PAC.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Ripple, XRP,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: they were in deep shit with the CFTC and all of a sudden their trouble went away
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: and now they're making deals with Visa and MasterCard and other major organizations
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: and people think that they may be the backbone of some crypto thing going forward.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: It changed the grift on them.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then Gemini's founders, the Winklevoss twins, Have steered tens of millions.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: These are just all the people that have been involved with Trump also.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then you've got Robinhood,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: another platform where customers can buy World Liberty financial tokens,
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: the stablecoin USD1,
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: and the Trump meme coin,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: which is worth nothing compared to what it did on the day that it pumped,
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: which he launched.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: We covered that again on How Do We Miss That?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: The day before he took office and the night before the inauguration at the Crypto Ball.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Remember that, Golden Monarch?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: I know you do.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can chat for a bit.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Listening at the moment to the Sludge article,
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: somehow Trump's meeting with the crypto industry pumped crypto.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just Trump's meeting with the crypto industry, though.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was what happened with the Japanese bond market.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Japan was dumping bonds,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: so people put money into crypto thinking it was a safer hedge than treasuries.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I saw happening.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: That was the pump.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that it happened during the week of this conference is really interesting.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't really put that together until just now.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sharing that.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody follow Golden Monarch over onSubstack and over on
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Twitter as well
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: if you're over there.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: From the start of last year to the first quarter of 2026,
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Public Citizen, who,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: not a fan of Public Citizen,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: they had to do with the silencing of Sam Husseini and that nonsense a couple
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: of weeks ago when he tried to protest and ask questions of Chuck Schumer
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: and they ended up escorting him out of the room.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: That was a meeting put on by Public Citizen.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: They calculated that crypto companies had bestowed more than $56 million
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: on MAGA Inc.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's nothing compared to the over $100 million that they spent on
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: the 2024 campaign and how much they stand to benefit in billions
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: when their regulations get dropped and they can operate freely.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Many crypto and prediction market companies,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: including Coinbase,
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Crypto.com, Gemini, Calci, Kraken,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Polymarket,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: and A16Z portfolio companies,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: like Substack,
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: have had enforcement actions dropped since Trump returned to the White House.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: All through.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this looks like a UFC mat, okay?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because all these people, by the way, advertise on UFC.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Really kind of interesting.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's the one guilty pleasure I allow myself to watch with Reeve occasionally.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: A recent Reuters investigation tallied the Trump family's crypto haul
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: at $2.3 billion in pre-tax income from November 2024 through April 2026.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Again,
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't necessarily believe Reuters either because they're a propaganda factory,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: just like everywhere else that's funded and can disseminate messaging across
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: the world within minutes to every major publication and then be cited on
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: the network nightly news in every city around the world.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's only about three or four organizations in the world that can do that,
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: and that's one of them.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Trump's own financial disclosure covering 2025, again,
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: which we covered earlier this year,
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: all his personal dealings filed with the OGE on June 29th,
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: showed at least $1.4 billion of crypto income,
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: including $635 million from the mean coin royalties.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And over $500 million from World Liberty Financial.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now what's even crazier is,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you remember,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: but the night of the crypto ball,
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: that Trump meme coin was worth $60 billion at one point.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the night had settled on about $2 or $3 billion.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And still degraded down to the point where they pulled out,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: they rugged $635 million of what they consider value.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, that's all on paper and all will be written down to zero in the end.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's nothing.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: It is literally shitcoin.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: The Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Legislation first introduced by Senate Democrats in January
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: of 2017 would require presidents and vice presidents to divest
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: from conflicted financial assets.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but that didn't pass.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Years later,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: its provisions were included in the Democrats' major ethics package for
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: the People Act, H.R.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: 1, which was passed by House Democrats in March of 2021 when they had the House and they had...
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: At least the split Senate,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: but they needed 60 votes in the Senate to go and get it,
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: and it was filibustered by Senate Republicans and failed to receive a vote in
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: the chamber.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it didn't pass.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: More comprehensive ethics legislation introduced in the Senate in August
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: of 2018 would expand the divestiture requirement to cover executive branch
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: and senior agency officials, as well as members of Congress and federal judges.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you know why that didn't pass.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: The far-reaching ethics bill,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: sponsored by Elizabeth Warren and Pramila Jayapal,
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: joined in past years by Progressive House co-sponsors,
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: has yet to receive a hearing in either chamber.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I can't imagine why!
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: No way!
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: You don't say!
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hilarious, okay, but...
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: The crypto grift is strong in this group.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: They've been bought off by the industry.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're fully invested themselves and have complete stake in this.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And, oh yeah, Howard Lutnick, he also is heavily involved.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Notice he didn't get mentioned at all.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't hear, what's the rumble, Tether, USDT.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Tether is still the dominant stablecoin, or Circle, that is Coinbase's.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Stablecoin.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Those still,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: USDT and USDC,
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: are still by far the two largest US dollar stablecoins that are pegged to
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: the US dollar and are worth about a dollar at all times.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Stablecoins.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: You hold them with that money in your account.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: It stays that money in your account.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: They used to have something called staking for a while.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Staking turned out to be a complete grift also where they do a new issuing
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: and put more in there.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, it's like interest on holding your money, holding your coin in an account there.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: The whole thing is just a major grift.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that is about what's going on.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just one article in the crypto industry.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Support Sludge.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Again, read Sludge.com.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: I like those guys, David Moore and Donnie Donnie.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: I like them a lot, and I find they do a good job of following the money.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Support independent media like Sludge.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: We are solely user funded and those are the people that have already done so.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Really appreciate them.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Cash app, dollar sign, Indie News Network.
• 26:35
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• 26:36
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• 26:40
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• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: which is one of the things that we do with our cash app.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: O-V.com slash Indie News Network.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: That, again,
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: puts us in so that we can fund the Restream account and the Canva,
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: where I make all the thumbnails and all these graphics,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: like the one that you're looking at right now, are subscriptions.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: IndieMedia Today.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're live over there.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And finally,
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: the website we created,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: IndieNewsNow.com, that features a lot of these outlets that I've been sharing.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Middle East Monitor,
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: and Sludge,
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: and Armando Weiss,
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: and AntiWar.com,
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: and a lot of other, Left Voice, and of course all the INN streams, and clips, and...
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: It shows,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: you'll see all of those things and articles that are written by INN members like
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: The Dissident.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find all of them over there.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Arturo Dominguez, Dissent in Bloom as well.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent, you know, user-funded independence.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we're about.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you to everyone who supports this channel,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: who subscribes, who shares, who tells everyone they know.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: And again, support independent media because we need it more than ever.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's what she said.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: I know that.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll see you soon, fam.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: No!
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: We just fucking lost the stream!
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I guess this isn't such an awful place It's not what you want me
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: to say You prove it's possible to sleep for days
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I still think you're right here awake The cost of living isn't much to make
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: But God, it's so hard to say.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when they told you everything was safe, were you safe?
• 28:50
  Were you safe?