Co-founder of digital media TheBigWhale and author of Bitcoin-Cryptos, the challenge of the century (Talents, 2025), Grégory Raymond analyzes the fever that has gripped the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin reached a record value there, at more than $109,000, this Monday, January 20, the day of Donald Trump's inauguration.
Why is the course of bitcoin does it flame?
For the first time, an openly pro-cryptocurrency president comes to the head of the world's largest economy and proposes various measures in favor of the sector. First, Trump plans to install a regulatory framework that is very favorable to companies that want to develop projects around crypto. With them, the Biden administration was very aggressive, suing them for example. The new President announced that he would change this and establish a national reserve of bitcoins, as a safe haven. This interest constitutes a real revolution for the sector in the United States. Out of pragmatism, a large majority of the ecosystem therefore lined up behind him.
While he was fiercely opposed to bitcoin, calling it“scam” in 2021 on Foxbusiness, why did he become favorable to it?
By opportunism. His change is very recent, less than a year old. He realized that there were a lot of pro-crypto people who no one spoke to even though they had the right to vote. He probably found it profitable to speak to them during the campaign. And in the end, let's not forget that the crypto industry participated in almost half of the donations for the election, ahead of traditional donors.
-Why did Trump launch your own cryptocurrencythe price of which quickly soared?
There is no other interest than to make him rich. He is very attracted to money, and this “memecoin” [cryptomonnaie qui monétise l’attention qu’ont les gens sur quelque chose, ndlr] allows him to capitalize on his support. Buying a “$Trump” is like buying a cap bearing his image, except that you can very quickly obtain thousands of them to resell or speculate with. He, meanwhile, is a winner on all fronts. Two days before his inauguration, it's incredible, we are in a parallel world. But the whole administration is changing and becoming pro-crypto, so he has nothing to worry about.
He launches his own cryptocurrency and, at the same time, panics the markets with his promises. Isn't the conflict of interest obvious?
Yes, totally. Moreover, people who saw the launch of this “$Trump” very early, in the first minutes, made millions. But there is no way to know if there was market manipulation or if people were unaware before the launch of this currency. On the other hand, people probably lost a lot of money buying this stuff. It's a black box, not possible. It's not serious and the events scare me a lot about what will happen for four years, beyond crypto.
