Bloomberg investigative reporter Zeke Faux says the Trump family's new crypto businesses have earned them tens of millions, while raising questions about political influence and ethics. Also, we remember Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, playwright and screenwriter Jules Feiffer.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. Besides the executive orders, pardons, and other moves, Trump and his family have started selling a brand new cryptocurrency coin featuring an image of Trump drawn from the assassination attempt he experienced during the presidential campaign.
It's a venture that by some accounts could make the president billions of dollars, though we'll discuss what that actually means. The new coin, which has drawn criticism from government ethics lawyers, is just one of several moves Trump has made to embrace cryptocurrency. He plans to replace the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who sued many crypto companies.
Trump's nominee to head the commission is Paul Atkins, a pro-crypto executive. And Trump's nominee for Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, heads an investment bank that's deeply involved with the cryptocurrency that's been used by arms dealers, scam artists, and drug traffickers, among others. If you find the whole subject of cryptocurrency confusing, fear not.
Our guest today, Bloomberg investigative reporter Zeke Fox, has written a fascinating and accessible book about crypto and he's reported on Trump's newfound enthusiasm for the industry. We'll talk about Trump's crypto moves as well as the nature of cryptocurrency, its role in the economy, and what the future holds for digital currency.
Zeke Fox's book is Number Go Up, Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. We recorded our conversation earlier this week. Zeke Fox, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks, Dave. So let's start with a simple understanding of what cryptocurrency is, right? It's a coin or a currency that really only exists as a digital entry in some computers of whoever creates or issues the coin.
And people trade for it, right? They speculate in it hoping that its value will rise or fall, right? Right.
Yeah. I mean, the original idea of cryptocurrency, which was unveiled 15 years ago by an anonymous person or group who went only by Satoshi Nakamoto, was that this was going to be a new method of making payments around the world. decentralized financial system that would revolutionize how people transacted. However, in the 15 years since then, that really hasn't happened.
People don't really use crypto in the real world for much of anything at all, except for a new method of gambling. And Trump's new cryptocurrency is a great example of that.
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