Eric Trump Is Going to the Moon

The second son of the former president has recast himself as a crypto bro, teasing in a tweet last week that he and older sibling, Don Jr., had “a big announcement” coming down the blockchain.

Eric Trump has joined the crypto craze, teasing a "big announcement" with his brother, Don Jr., and revealing his newfound love for the digital currency world.

The second son of the former president shared the news on Twitter last week, writing, "Don and I have a big announcement coming down the blockchain. I have truly fallen in love with Crypto / DeFi."

He tagged his father, Don Jr., and the Trump Organization in the post, adding, "We're about to shake up the crypto world with something HUGE."

Don Jr. replied the next day, "Stay tuned crypto fans. Something big is coming down the blockchain."

While the兄弟have yet to reveal their highly anticipated project, Eric spoke to the New York Post on Wednesday to continue building excitement for the announcement.

"It's digital real estate," Eric told the Post. "It's equitable. It's collateral anyone can get access to and do so instantly. I don't know if people realize what a shake-up that is for the world of banking and finance. I hope we can help change that."

After highlighting the golden rule of trusting anyone who promises you instant access to wealth, Eric shifted gears and railed against the "financial discrimination" his family has faced, a curious way of avoiding the subject of the Trumps' various monetary woes.

He concluded on a lighter note, expressing his desire to help build "a world where we don't have to play by the big bank's playbook."

Given that cryptocurrency and its cornerstone, Bitcoin, have enjoyed general mainstream awareness since at least 2017, it seems strange that Eric, 40, would choose now to start shilling for the coin.

But in a strange coincidence of timing that likely has no greater significance, Eric's original tweet dropped the same day that the Donald J. Trump meme token saw its liquidity pulled, an exit scam known in the crypto world as a "rug pull."

This tactic sees a coin's creators hype it up, then abruptly vanish with investor funds, rendering it worthless.

Because of the way the blockchain functions, it's impossible to know for sure who created the DJT coin earlier this year. Credit has been claimed by Martin ‘Pharma Bro’ Shkreli, who said in June that he had worked with Donald Trump’s 18-year-old son, Barron, to create the token.

“I have over 1000 pieces of evidence I created it with Barron,” he told crypto sleuth ZachXBT.

When the coin lost 95 percent of its market value on Tuesday, Shkreli pointed to Barron, tweeting in response to a user asking him to comment on its plunge to "ask barron, I don't have the keys or any tokens."

Shkreli did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday night. Nor did the Trump campaign, which has never formally acknowledged the DJT token or Shkreli's claims about Barron's involvement.

Crypto's DJT is not to be confused with Nasdaq's DJT, the ticker under which shares of the Trump Media & Technology Group trade.

Trump Media has suffered more setbacks than steps forward since publicly debuting in March, with the Truth Social owner admitting at the end of last week that it made $836,900 in revenue last quarter, a 30 percent drop from the year prior. Its quarterly losses amounted to $16.4 million, it said.

After that Friday announcement, the stock hit an even lower low on Monday, plunging just over 5 percent as Trump returned to X for the first time in more than a year in advance of a live streamed interview with owner Elon Musk on the platform that night. Shares cratered out at $24.60, their lowest in months.

Trump, Former Crypto Skeptic, Is Going All Out to Win the Bitcoin Bro Vote

As for the stock and coin's namesake, there was a time when the former president turned up his nose at cryptocurrency, unloading on it as “a scam” and “a disaster waiting to happen” in interviews as recently as 2021.

“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” he tweeted in 2019. “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”

Trump's observations remain correct; the asset class is fundamentally unregulated and untethered to trust in the government or a central bank, leaving investors vulnerable to risk, ruin, and con artists of all shapes and sizes.

Since President Joe Biden took office, the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed dozens of actions against crypto firms and personalities. Biden himself has advocated for “appropriate guardrails” to be installed around the medium to better protect consumers and investors.

But Trump is singing a markedly