At Monday's Global Financial Freedom launch event hosted by Decrypt's sister company Rugged Radio, former US President Donald Trump expressed his excitement about his own branded NFT projects to turn cryptocurrency into.
As the Republican presidential candidate explained, Trump saw that many of his NFT trading cards included in the Ethereum Scaling Network Polygon were being purchased in cryptocurrency — and his supporters were excited about his entry into the space.
“A lot of people have paid this way,” Trump said. “If they had paid in dollars, I would have said that's normal, I guess – and I would have been angry.
Before launching the first batch of NFTs in December 2022, Trump has admitted that he has no interest in crypto. In fact, he had previously criticized Bitcoin during his first term as president, saying he was “not a fan”. In the year In an interview after leaving the White House in 2021, Bitcoin “seems like a scam.”
But that's no longer the case, and seeing the use of crypto to buy his NFTs seems to have helped him change his mind. And after that first project sold out in 2022, Trump launched three more digital trading cards—the latest of which debuted in August.
“I asked what percentage was taken between Bitcoin and other things, but in crypto, and it was a lot,” he said, adding that he was surprised by the number of people willing to spend their crypto on the digital cards.
“I was a little surprised by that, and that was a while ago — and it opened my eyes,” he said. But I think my kids opened my eyes more than anything else.
Joining Trump in the live Twitter space are his three sons, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump — the youngest of whom Trump says is an experienced crypto user even at age 18.
“Barron knows a lot about this and he's young, but he knows,” Trump said. “[Barron] He talks about his wallet, he has four wallets or something, he knows it well.
“Younger people seem to know better than older people,” Trump added. But I have great respect for them.
Trump likened the crypto industry to a fledgling but huge business, adding that it “has the potential to be something special.”
“When I do things, I notice a lot of crypto coming in; people paying in crypto,” Trump said. “You didn't see that a year ago, two years ago. So I think it's huge, but it's just the beginning of what's going to happen.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward.
Editor's note: This story has been updated after publication with additional details.
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