Author: YBB Capital Researcher Zeke

Preface

For President Trump, the world is a huge "Apprentice" reality show. In less than a month of taking office, from internal agency staff to foreign leaders, many have already received dismissal letters from Trump saying "You're fired." In the remaining four years of the show, how can Crypto, as a key guest, successfully advance? I think we might have to start by understanding this boss.

I. The market likes surprises, but I must control the pace

In Trump's autobiography "The Art of the Deal," "controlling the pace" and "creating surprises" are the core pillars of his negotiation philosophy. The interweaving application of these two strategies not only built his early business empire, but also set the tone for his later political battles.

• "Controlling the pace": The original quote in the book: "In a deal, you have to set the pace. If you let the other side dictate the timing, you've already lost half the battle."

• "Creating surprises": The original quote in the book: "The element of surprise is crucial. When they think you've given in, hit them with a new demand—it throws them off balance."

Looking back at Trump's classic negotiation cases during his early business days, starting from the New York Hyatt Hotel project in 1976, Trump has shown absolute control over the pace of negotiations. When the city government demanded that he bear the cost of renovating the subway station, he used the threat of withdrawing from the negotiations to create a sense of urgency - he suddenly announced a work stoppage just three days before the city budget deadline, forcing the New York City Council to urgently pass a tax relief plan, ultimately increasing the government subsidy from $40 million to $120 million. In the 1983 Trump Tower project, he even took the delaying tactic to the extreme: when the project was 90% complete, he suddenly sued the contractor for construction delays, using the other party's eagerness to settle the final payment to successfully compress the project payment by 23%.

The 1985 Atlantic City casino acquisition case was the pinnacle of his "surprise strategy." After eight months of negotiations, when the seller, the Pratt Hotel Group, had already prepared for the signing ceremony, Trump threw out a new demand to take on $300 million in debt in the last 48 hours. This seemingly crazy move was actually precisely calculated: he knew the other party had already invested $2 million in legal fees, and the bankruptcy of the project would lead to collective debt collection by the banks. In the end, the seller was forced to accept the terms, and Trump completed the acquisition at 40% below the market price. This "sunk cost extortion" later became his signature negotiation style, as described in "The Art of the Deal": "The best time to exert the fatal blow is when the opponent thinks they have the upper hand." This highly coercive negotiation strategy is both the "rules of the deal" he advocates and the "destructive survival tactics" he is so controversial about.

Let's bring the timeline back to the recent days, on February 28, Zelensky and Trump held a globally broadcast US-Ukraine bilateral meeting at the White House, and Trump still used his usual tactics in this meeting. First, on the eve of the meeting, he reached a lightning-fast four-point consensus with Russia, the most critical of which was that the two sides agreed to lay the foundation for future cooperation on common geopolitical interests and economic and investment opportunities, which would emerge as the Russia-Ukraine conflict ended. The second was to issue a sky-high order demanding $500 billion in repayment, and in the meeting this demand was changed to Ukraine channeling 50% of the future earnings from strategic resources such as rare earths, lithium, and graphite into a "reconstruction fund" led by the US. The live broadcast of the entire meeting left the world audience stunned, and in the end Trump even demanded that Zelensky leave directly, leading to the breakdown of the negotiations. And the tariff stick he waved outward also encountered retaliation. President Trump obviously did not have a happy weekend.

From the above several cases, we can get a more specific summary of Trump's deal rules: 1. Propose goals far higher than expected, forcing the other party to accept suboptimal conditions; 2. Utilize all means to put pressure on the other party to maximize interests; 3. Be unpredictable, making it impossible for the other party to figure out; 4. Habitually use the power of the media to endlessly amplify events.

And from the counterattacks of multiple countries, the way to counter this strategy seems quite simple: refuse to make a deal, refuse to negotiate.

II. Strategic Reserves

After the US-Ukraine bilateral meeting ended last Sunday, Trump posted two tweets on his social media platform Truth Social, stating that XRP, SOL and ADA will be included in the "crypto strategic reserve," with ETH and BTC still being the core. After the news was released, the market saw a bull run, according to CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin once rose 9% to $93,969, Ethereum rose 13% to $2,516, Solana soared 24% to $174.64, Cardano surged 70% to $1.11, and XRP rose 34% to $2.93. However, the reaction of the crypto community to these two "fire-fighting" tweets was very different from the previous supportive attitude, and the key fuse was the appearance of a suspected insider trading user on Hyperliquid, who used hundreds of millions of dollars to 50x long BTC & ETH at an extremely coincidental time point, and according to social media analysis, the reason why the user chose to place orders on the DEX was to avoid obtaining their KYC information by centralized exchanges. There are also many conspiracy theories, such as the Sunday release was to pull up prices for institutional work days, and using multiple channels to cash out, treating the crypto circle as an ATM, and so on.

Trump's sudden announcement of a basket of cryptocurrency reserves is still in line with his usual style, but the real purpose is difficult to fathom, and given his current appetite, these speculations may still be far from enough. Combining the "deal rules" mentioned above, I personally speculate that some possible purposes may be:

1. Although he mentioned the reserves of various cryptocurrencies, the actual purpose may be just to get the US to accept a suboptimal situation, i.e. at least ensure that the BTC strategic reserve becomes a reality. This will attract more mainstream countries to buy BTC, and the US will still maintain dominance;

2. In addition to greater influence after being elected president, Trump can also constantly create hype around the "strategic reserve" expectations, just like the past ETF expectations, in order to continuously control the market trend;

3. Trump needs to constantly strive for influence and power for this family that has shifted from real estate to crypto, and he is trying to enter crypto from every possible angle;

4. There is obviously a more complex network of interests behind the "White House selection";

5. Currently there is a clear lack of funding sources to buy the crypto strategic reserves, Trump may be using his usual media support to force the seized cryptocurrencies to be converted into strategic reserves, or to demand the issuance of related bonds;

6. The basic concept of strategic reserves is the planned storage of materials, energy, and financial resources by a country in peacetime. The biggest question about cryptocurrencies becoming strategic reserves is that they have no intrinsic use, even if BTC can be compared to gold. Then the introduction of the strategic reserves of other altcoin public chains still lacks support, and Trump may already have plans to promote the large-scale adoption of several public chains in various fields, and the public chain tokens as the "oil" to access the chain can naturally also be regarded as "material reserves".

III. Destructive Survival

Donald Trump's decision-making style and personality traits are deeply influenced by his father, Fred Trump. His father, through high-pressure education, defined interpersonal relationships as a "zero-sum game," and this growth environment shaped Trump's competitive mentality of "demonizing" his opponents. Whether it is his confrontational cases in the business and diplomatic fields, or the incident of inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol after his defeat in 2020, they clearly highlight his survival law of attack, destruction, and suppression as the core.

Retail investors in the crypto world often shout "Long live the Crypto President" due to their alliance of interests, but we need to be cautious that we may not be on the same side as the Crypto President. The concept of "America First" and "Family First" will still be implemented in his crypto world. Although it is not yet clear how Trump will retaliate against non-American and non-family projects, it is clear that he is using a similar trade war approach to ensure the "America First" and "Family First" in the on-chain world.

1. Priority for American projects through ETFs and strategic reserves;

2. American projects may enjoy zero capital gains tax in the future, while projects he dislikes may be taxed;

3. "Privileges" for family projects, such as regulatory sandboxes and targeted bailouts.

The above three points are the current obvious trends, and in my opinion, Trump may also have ways to suppress the output of non-American mining pools, so that every remaining BTC is as much as possible stamped with "Made in USA". Only projects that meet US standards will thrive on the chain with the integration of regulatory interfaces at the protocol layer. And there is much more to be unfolded in the next four years, the Americanization of crypto is already inevitable. As participants in this grand plan, we either choose to ally or choose to "refuse to trade".

IV. The Shadow of DOGE

Trump's friend Elon Musk once in the 2021 crypto bull market, pushed the originally satirical Dogecoin to a market capitalization and physical "moon" status. This joke coin, which originated from an internet meme, was initially developed by engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer in 2013 to mock the crazy speculation in the crypto market at the time. Its code was completed in just 3 hours, using an unlimited issuance mechanism, and even referred to mining as "digging holes," completely overturning the scarcity narrative of Bitcoin.

However, Musk has given this ancient Meme new life through social media. He has been calling himself the "Dogecoin Father" since 2019, igniting market enthusiasm with slogans like "to the moon" and "the people's currency," and even named SpaceX's 2025 lunar satellite launch mission DOGE-1, making it the first space project fully paid for by Dogecoin. This frenzy has driven Dogecoin to surge over 7000% in 2021, with its market capitalization once exceeding $85 billion, surpassing traditional giants like General Motors, completing a reversal from a satirical tool to a top 10 global crypto asset.

The greatest tragedy in the world is to become the person you hate the most. The crypto world is re-enacting the fate trajectory of its object of resistance. Bitcoin, once the "anti-centralization blade," has now become the new carrier of American hegemony - capital flows are following the swing of Trump's tweets, from BTC to Trump, Melania, and so-called strategic reserve altcoins, wherever the baton points is the future of crypto, and the vitality of crypto has been lost. When the rebels become part of the establishment, crypto can never escape the narrative closed loop of "the dragon-slaying youth eventually becoming the dragon".

V. Double-edged Sword

Putting aside self-interest, Trump is indeed a legend in the history of American politics and business, and I also believe that BTC will accompany him to the moon. But what innovation can crypto have under the interference of power and high regulation? In the past, I was angry at altcoins, but now I also feel sorry for them. The battle for attention and power is permeating the chain, just as Vitalik replied to the Ethereum OGs on X:

When I hear crypto Twitter and VC firms proclaiming that "user loss rates over 99% of PvP, KOL gambler casinos are the products most suited to the crypto field and market," and calling "longing for something better is elitist," do I feel pleased?

And in the future, this situation may become even more intense, PvP is just a microcosm, in the next four years, the so-called best projects may only appear in Trump's tweets. The crypto that Trump advocates has always been a double-edged sword, and crypto may eventually split into multiple layers such as traditional and American-style, and the past public chain war will also be carried out on a larger scale. Under Trump's strong strategy and huge influence, this war may be fought very fiercely, but the rebirth of crypto will inevitably go through this ordeal.