Author: Lionel Laurent, Bloomberg Opinion Columnist Translated by: J1N, Techub News

U.S. President Trump Eric Trump, the second son, believes that now is a good time to buy Ethereum, and he believes that his support for Ethereum has driven a brief rise in the currency price. But at the same time, it is also a good time for politicians and regulators to take action to establish stricter regulatory measures against the cryptocurrency business that the Trump family and its associated personnel are actively promoting, whose family businesses are expanding rapidly, and There is a serious conflict of interest with regulators.

It is now clear that the Trump family wants to not only put the United States on the path of supporting cryptocurrencies through more friendly regulatory measures, they also want to be in it. Get a piece of the pie. World Liberty Financial, a decentralized financial platform backed by the Trump family, has established cryptocurrency reserves, including Ethereum worth about $340 million. According to Reuters, Trump issued billions of Memecoins out of thin air and generated nearly $100 million in transaction fee revenue for the president-related institutions. In addition, Trump’s Truth Social platform is also expanding its business and planning to enter the financial services field.

This is not a small investment like an ordinary family. According to my current spot price, the institutions currently associated with Trump are currently The book value of Memecoin held is approximately US$14.9 billion. If these numbers are already staggering, the risks are equally astonishing. As investors and industry insiders try to please the Trump team by buying their tokens, it will eventually lead to the intensification of power transfer and corruption. At the same time, this also brings moral risks, because when the most powerful people in the world and their relatives promote Memecoin and are able to take risks, it will lead to more people investing in Memecoin without knowing their own risk tolerance. . When Trump was told how valuable he was in his Memecoin, he responded almost carelessly, "billions of dollars are just small money."

So, when Eric Trump friendlyly hinted on Twitter that "Ethereum is worth buying", he was by no means just talking, just as he did on X I also seemed to realize this when I deleted the sentence "You can thank me in the future". Whether it is coincidence or intentional, World Liberty puts his ideas into practice, at TrumpThe project address increased its holdings of about $55 million worth of Ethereum after the tariff threat triggered a sell-off over the weekend. This happened after the platform moved most of its reserves to Coinbase, although they denied there were plans for sale. At this stage, the conspiracy theory of Trump’s team’s cryptocurrency harvesting market through cryptocurrency is not valid. After all, Trump’s tariffs are not conducive to cryptocurrencies, and his son’s tweets have a very limited overall impact on the market. However, given that this is the third week of new office, the atmosphere of "Banana Republic" has become very strong.

(When people say a "banana republic", they are criticizing this serious confusion and corruption problem.)

Democracy has existed for a long time to establish institutional safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest. But the question is whether the authorities are determined enough to actually implement these measures. The United States has promoted reforms to officials’ morality and transparency after the Watergate incident, and also introduced the Stock Act of 2012 to combat insider trading, as well as the Foreign Interest Clause that has existed since the Constitution. Cryptocurrencies cannot be an excuse to evade regulation: EU's latest digital asset rules clearly stipulate terms for insider trading and market abuse. Moreover, former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who was nominated by Trump, has agreed to sell her shares and cryptocurrency to comply with the regulations.

If the authorities do not implement and strengthen measures effectively, then supervision of behavior will be in vain. Trump seems to care nothing about it. Trump’s nominated candidate for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did not say whether he would shirk participation in the cryptocurrency task force because his company, Cantor Fitzgerald, holds convertible bonds related to stablecoin Tether. There is a problem of custody and theft within the institution, which may cause economic losses in the future; for example, when the German fintech company Wirecard AG went bankrupt, staff of its regulator BaFin were suspected of insider trading Wirecard's stock instead of fulfilling supervisory responsibilities. We hope that Trump-appointed cryptocurrency director David Sacks can really deliver on his promises when he promises to strengthen consumer protection.

At least, for all politicians, a basic requirement is that they must deposit all their investments into the "blind trusts" trust on the day they take office, and at the same time, The investment of their relatives must also be restricted. Here, "blind trusts" trust refers to an asset management method.Politicians hand over property to third parties to manage, thus avoiding any impact on investment operations to prevent officials from seeking personal gain through power. This is the point put forward by Garen Markarian, an expert in corporate governance at the University of Lausanne. It is worrying that the current general attitude of the elite class is to advocate reducing supervision rather than strengthening scrutiny of politicians and their related investments.

Trump is joining forces with the cryptocurrency circle to crack down on the so-called "debanking" phenomenon; at the same time, Musk is allowed to set rules on his own. He is using DOGE as a weapon to fight. This is totally typical overconfidence, especially given that the president has been convicted of fraud. This also sends a signal of arrogance to the ordinary people, allowing people to see that the privileged class with internal information will appear more tolerant to these people. Regulatory chaos in the cryptocurrency field has become obvious, but there are few signs of action to clear it up.