A Dude

Wait what?

Trump’s Mar a Lago crypto dinner is one of the cleanest examples yet of what crypto becomes or has become when speculative markets, personal branding, political power and access capitalism collapse into 1 machine. Today, on April 25, Trump is scheduled to appear at a private “Crypto and Business Conference” at Mar a Lago for holders of the $TRUMP scam memecoin. Attendance is not based on public service, expertise, contribution to the ecosystem or democratic legitimacy. It is based on token ownership. The top 297 holders were invited, and the top 29 holders were promised additional VIP access, including a reception with Trump. That means access to a sitting president was functionally organised through a memecoin leaderboard. Senators Warren, Schiff and Blumenthal have already requested documents about whether Trump helped plan, promote or profit from the event, and their letter states that CIC Digital LLC, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, and Fight Fight Fight LLC collectively own 80% of Trump Cards and receive trading revenue from $TRUMP activity. The entire structure is rotten because the incentive is obvious. Create a coin around a political figure. Let retail speculate on proximity to power. Reward the biggest holders with access. Keep trading activity alive through attention, events, headlines and artificial scarcity. Then frame the whole thing as “community”, “business” or “innovation”, while the real product is not technology at all. The real product is proximity. A memecoin is already one of the most reflexive and manipulable assets in crypto. Its value is not tied to productive cash flow, infrastructure, earnings, adoption or real world utility. It lives from narrative, liquidity, attention and social coordination. The Guardian correctly described memecoins as highly volatile tokens whose value is not tied to a real world asset, but to something that has gone viral online. Sad but true. Now attach that instrument to the president of the United States and suddenly the speculative object is no longer just a joke. It becomes a tool for influence, access and political monetisation. The facts are already bad enough without exaggeration. The event is tied to the top holders of Trump’s own memecoin. The top 29 holders receive superior access. Last year’s Trump coin dinner reportedly brought in $148 million and was criticised by Democrats and watchdog groups as a pay to play conflict because it was not campaign fundraising but personal financial benefit. This year’s event is being held again, while the token itself is collapsing. The approximate minimum holdings needed to attend the 2025 Trump memecoin dinner were about $55,000, while 1 apparent invitee for the 2026 conference held about $8,460 worth of TRUMP when the leaderboard closed. $TRUMP traded around $14.67 on the day of the 2025 gathering, but was around $2.53 now. In plain English: even the access trade is decaying. The hype is weaker, the token is weaker, and the only thing still functioning is the extraction model. The Independent also reported that the median holdings needed for this year’s VIP access were around $539,000, down from about $3.28 million last year, a drop of more than 80%. The same report said Trump was expected to speak at the crypto event before returning to Washington for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner later that evening. So on the same day, the president moves from a private memecoin access event to a press freedom dinner, while his administration and personal brand remain deeply entangled with media attacks, crypto ventures and monetised political spectacle. For years, this industry claimed to stand against banks, corruption, insider privilege, opaque power structures and rigged access. Then the same crowd lines up to buy a president’s memecoin because maybe, somehow, being close to power will make them early. That is just begging for a seat at the smallest table in the system. The $TRUMP dinner is not a crypto event. It is a mirror. It shows a market where ideology gets sold as liquidity, patriotism gets sold as branding, access gets sold as utility and retail gets sold the fantasy that holding a token means holding influence. The most brutal part is that none of this is hidden. I call it one of the clearest political grifts crypto has ever produced. Because when a token gives you access to power, that is feudalism with a contract address.

Wisdom of the crowd question: What say you about e-readers? I'm often traveling and I've got to carry so, so many devices. I don't want to haul a dozen physical books. I prefer high-contrast, black and white over colour, a big-ish screen, and buttons. Worth a Kobo?

BRADY TKACHUK IN THE PLAYOFFS 🔥🔥

Both parties here are no doubt aware that Carney is good friends with the guy Bloomberg is named after. I hope the reporter's boss congratulates her for pressing the pm.

This is an ongoing pattern in how some on the right deal with Donald Trump. Rather than acknowledge that he is a person with responsibility and agency, and rather than acknowledge that he has threatened Canada, started the trade conflict (Canada already had the ‘tariff-free deal’ the Conservatives claim is ‘their plan’ until Trump unilaterally blew it up), rather than acknowledge that Trump is hostile to the concept of free trade itself, and rather than acknowledge that reducing our dependence on trade with the U.S. is the only way reduce our susceptibility to economic coercion, some on the pro-MAGA Canadian right prefer instead to blame it all on Canada. This is psychological weakness, weakness borne out of a desire to submit to Trump within an authoritarian dominance hierarchy, and anger towards those – like the non-MAGA majority in Canada – who see Trump for what he is and who refuse to submit to his irrational demands.

Pierre Poilievre: "He says he wants this rupture with the U.S. Does that mean he wants to pull out of the CUSMA? Because that's what a rupture would mean. Unless the word was just a meaningless sensationalist slogan."