- Donald Trump has launched a new mysterious crypto project named The DeFiant Ones, which some say is his DeFi project to boost financial inclusion.
- XRP could be one of the networks considered to underpin Trump’s DeFi venture, and Ripple higher-ups have previously discussed this with the Trump administration.
Donald Trump has dropped yet another crypto bombshell. This time, he teased a DeFi venture that could be one of his landmark financial inclusion projects, and the XRP community believes the network is among the likely candidates to underpin the project.
Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate for this year’s elections, teased the project on Truth Social, his company’s social media platform that provides an alternative to X and Facebook. He noted that for decades, Americans “have been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites.”
He called on his supporters to “take a stand together.”
In a characteristically Trump way, the post was scant on details for his project, like most of his promises to the crypto world this year. It did, however, contain a link to a Telegram group that now has over 44,000 members.
The group describes itself as “the only official Telegram channel for the Trump DeFi project!” In a Friday post on the group, the team dug down on Trump’s criticism of traditional finance, which he says has rigged the system against Americans.
“They shut people out, deny them loans, drown them in paperwork and kill them with legal and processing fees. These banks and the elites who run them want absolute control, but that ends now,” the team added.
However, despite demonising TradFi, it’s worth noting that Trump owns stock in JPMorgan Chase & Co, the largest bank in the US. The former president even claimed in an interview with Bloomberg that he would consider JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon for the role of Treasury Secretary (although he later denied it).
The DeFiant Ones adds:
We’re making finance great again by putting the power back in YOUR hands. This new DeFi platform will cut out the corrupt, expensive and inefficient middlemen. No more bureaucrats deciding your fate. It’s time to modernize an unfair and antiquated system and give everyone the same opportunities the elites have been hoarding. Join us, and let’s make finance work for the people again.
Can XRP have a role in Trump’s DeFi pledge? Well, the XRP Ledger has increasingly become a formidable DeFi ecosystem. Later this year, Ripple will launch a stablecoin, which could attract billions in liquidity, making it even more suitable for a national DeFi platform.
One of XRPL’s biggest advantages over rivals like Ethereum is the fees; for a DeFi platform to be accessible to the financially marginalised, its fees must be very low, which Ethereum still hasn’t mastered despite being the biggest player in the space and even switching to proof of stake.
🚨 BREAKING:
Donald Trump says: "For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites.“
And Ripple has discussed #XRP with the Trump administration already in 2018 👀https://t.co/tdcNSAru56 pic.twitter.com/UzCJ1KXUxa
— 𝓐𝓶𝓮𝓵𝓲𝓮 (@_Crypto_Barbie) August 22, 2024
XRP trades at $0.6013, shedding 1.9% in the past day.