Original author: YBB Capital Researcher Zeke
Preface
For President Trump, the world is a giant reality show called The Apprentice. Less than a month after taking office, many people, from internal agency employees to foreign leaders, have received dismissal letters from Trump saying Youre fired. How can Crypto, as a key guest, successfully advance in the remaining four years of the show? I think we may have to start by understanding this boss.
1. The market likes surprises, but I must control the rhythm
In Trumps autobiography, The Art of the Deal, controlling the rhythm and creating surprises constitute the core pillars of his negotiation philosophy. The interweaving of these two strategies not only built his early business empire, but also laid the tone for his later political games.
“Control the pace”: Original sentence in the book: “In a deal, you have to set the pace. If you let the other side dictate the timing, youve already lost half the battle.”
Create surprise: Original sentence in the book: The element of surprise is crucial. When they think youve given in, hit them with a new demand—it throws them off balance.
Looking back at classic negotiation cases from Trumps early business career, starting with the Grand Hyatt Hotel project in New York in 1976, Trump showed absolute control over the pace of negotiations. When the city government asked him to bear the cost of subway station reconstruction, he threatened to withdraw from the negotiations to create a sense of urgency - he suddenly announced a suspension of work three days before the municipal budget deadline, forcing the New York City Council to urgently pass a tax reduction plan, and ultimately increased government subsidies from $40 million to $120 million. In the Trump Tower project in 1983, he took the delay tactic to the extreme: when the project progress reached 90%, he suddenly sued the contractor for construction delays, and took advantage of the other partys eagerness to settle the final payment, successfully reducing the project payment by 23%.
The Atlantic City Casino acquisition in 1985 was his pinnacle performance of the surprise strategy. After eight months of negotiations, when the seller, Pratt Hotel Group, had prepared for the signing ceremony, Trump threw out a new requirement of $300 million in debt in the last 48 hours. This seemingly crazy move was actually a precise calculation: he knew that the other party had invested $2 million in legal fees, and the bankruptcy of the project would lead to collective debt collection by banks. In the end, the seller was forced to accept the terms, and Trump completed the acquisition at a cost 40% lower than the market price. This sunk cost extortion technique later became his signature negotiation style, as stated in The Art of the Deal: When the opponent thinks he has won, it is the best time to deliver a fatal blow. This highly oppressive negotiation strategy is both the trading rule he advocates and his controversial destructive survival technique.
Lets go back to the recent days. On February 28, Zelensky and Trump held a bilateral meeting between the United States and Ukraine at the White House, which was broadcast live worldwide. In this meeting, Trump still used his usual strategy. First, he broke the ice with Russia on the eve of the meeting and reached a four-point consensus. The most critical point was that the two sides agreed to lay the foundation for future cooperation on issues of common geopolitical interests and economic and investment opportunities, which will emerge with the end of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The second was to open a sky-high order for a repayment of $500 billion. In the talks, this requirement was changed to Ukraine injecting 50% of the future income from strategic resources such as rare earths, lithium, and graphite into the reconstruction fund led by the United States. The live broadcast of the entire meeting stunned the world audience. In the end, Trump asked Zelensky to leave directly, which led to the breakdown of the negotiations. The tariff stick wielded abroad also encountered a reciprocal counterattack. President Trump obviously did not have a happy weekend.
From the above cases, we can get a more specific summary of Trumps trading rules: 1. Propose goals far higher than expected, forcing opponents to accept suboptimal conditions; 2. Use all means to put pressure on opponents to maximize benefits; 3. Be capricious and make it difficult for opponents to figure out; 4. Use the communication power of the media to infinitely amplify events.
Judging from the counterattacks of many countries, the way to counter this strategy seems to be very simple: refuse to trade and refuse to negotiate.
2. Strategic Reserves
Last Sunday, after the US-Ukraine bilateral talks, Trump posted two tweets on his social media Truth Social, saying that XRP, SOL and ADA will be included in the Crypto Strategic Reserve, with ETH and BTC still the core. After the news was released, the market ushered in a wave of bullish returns. According to CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin once rose 9% to $93,969, Ethereum rose 13% to $2,516, Solana soared 24% to $174.64, Cardano soared 70% to $1.11, and XRP rose 34% to $2.93. The reaction of the community to these two fire-fighting tweets is quite different from the previous supportive attitude. The most critical trigger was that a suspected insider trading user appeared on Hyperliquid at a very coincidental time, using millions of US dollars to buy 50 times more BTC ETH. According to analysis on social media, the reason why the user chose to open an order on DEX was to avoid centralized exchanges from obtaining their KYC information. There are many related conspiracy theories, such as the release on Sunday is for institutions to increase shipments on weekdays, and to ship through multiple channels to use the cryptocurrency circle as an ATM.
Trumps sudden announcement of a basket of cryptocurrency reserves is still in line with his usual style, but the real purpose is hard to figure out. Given his current appetite, these speculations may not be big enough. Combined with the trading rules mentioned above, I personally speculate that some possible purposes are:
1. Although many cryptocurrency reserves have been mentioned, it is actually just to make the United States accept the suboptimal situation, that is, to at least ensure that the BTC strategic reserve becomes a reality. This will attract more mainstream countries to buy BTC, and the United States still has the dominant position;
2. Trump has more than just greater influence after being elected president. With his power, he can also continue to build momentum for strategic reserve expectations, just like the ETF expectations in the past, thereby continuously controlling the market trend;
3. Trump needs to constantly strive for influence and power for this family that has turned from real estate to crypto, and he is approaching crypto from every possible angle;
4. There is obviously a more complicated network of interests behind the White House strict selection;
5. There is a clear lack of funding sources for buying crypto strategic reserves. Trump is using his usual public opinion support to force the seized cryptocurrencies to be converted into strategic reserves, or to require the issuance of related bonds;
6. The basic concept of strategic reserves refers to the materials, energy, financial resources and other resources that a country stores in a planned manner during 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 strategic reserves of other copycat public chain tokens still lack support. Trump may have plans to promote the large-scale adoption of the above public chains in various fields. Public chain tokens, as the oil on the access chain, can naturally be regarded as material reserves.
3. Destructive Survival
Trumps decision-making style and personality traits are deeply influenced by his father, Fred Trump. His father defined interpersonal relationships as zero-sum games through high-pressure education. This growing environment shaped Trumps competitive mentality of enemyizing his opponents. Whether it is the confrontation cases in his business and diplomatic fields, or the incident of inciting supporters to storm the Capitol after losing the election in 2020, it clearly highlights his survival rules centered on attack, destruction and suppression.
Retail investors in the cryptocurrency circle often shout Long live the crypto president due to their interest alliance, but we need to be cautious that we may not be on the same front with the crypto president, and the concept of America first and family first will still be implemented in his crypto world. Although it is not clear how Trump will counter non-US and non-family projects, it is clear that he is using a tariff war-like approach to ensure America first and family first in the on-chain world.
1. US projects are given priority through ETFs and strategic reserves;
2. US projects may enjoy zero capital gains tax in the future, but on the contrary, taxes may be increased on projects that he does not like;
3. The “privileges” of family projects, such as regulatory sandbox and targeted transfusions.
The above three points are obvious trends at the moment. I think Trump may still have a way to suppress the output of non-US mining pools, so as to ensure that every remaining BTC is printed with Made in USA as much as possible. Only projects that meet US standards can prosper on the chain by accessing the regulatory interface at the protocol layer. There is still a lot to be done in the next four years. The Americanization of encryption has inevitably entered the shell-breaking stage. We who are in this conspiracy can either choose to ally or choose to refuse to trade.
4. The Shadow of DOGE
Trumps friend Elon Musk once pushed Dogecoin, which was originally created to satirize Bitcoin, to the double moon in terms of market value and physical sense during the 2021 cryptocurrency bull market. This joke coin originated from an Internet meme and was originally developed by engineers Billy Marcus and Jackson Palmer in 2013 to mock the crazy speculation in the cryptocurrency market at that time. Its code took only 3 hours to complete, adopted an unlimited issuance mechanism, and even jokingly called mining digging holes, completely subverting the scarcity narrative of Bitcoin.
However, Musk has given this old meme new life through social media. Since 2019, he has called himself the Father of Dogecoin, igniting market enthusiasm with slogans such as Moon Landing and Peoples Currency. In 2025, he named SpaceXs lunar satellite launch mission DOGE-1, becoming the first space project fully paid for by Dogecoin. This carnival pushed Dogecoin to soar by more than 7,000% in 2021, with a market value of over $85 billion, surpassing traditional giants such as General Motors, and completing the counterattack from a satirical tool to one of the top ten crypto assets in the world by market value.
The greatest sorrow in the world is that you become the person you hate the most. The crypto world is repeating the fate of its opponents. Bitcoin, once a sharp weapon against centralization, has now become a new carrier of American hegemony - the flow of funds follows the baton of Trumps tweets, from BTC to Trump, Melania and then to these so-called copycat strategic reserves. Where the baton points is the future of crypto, and the activity of crypto has been lost. When the rebels become part of the establishment, crypto ultimately fails to escape the narrative loop of the dragon slayer eventually becomes the dragon.
5. Double-edged sword
Putting aside the perspective of 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 cryptocurrencies have under strong interference and high regulation? I used to be angry at the copycats for not fighting, but now I feel sorry for their misfortune. The game of attention and power is rampant on the chain, just as Vitalik replied to Ethereum OG on X:
Do I feel happy when I hear people on crypto Twitter and venture capital firms proclaiming that PvP, with a user loss rate of over 99%, KOL gambler casinos are the most market-matched products in the crypto field and that desiring something better is condescending elitism?
This situation may intensify in the future. PvP is just a microcosm. In the next four years, the so-called best projects may only appear in President Trumps tweets. Trumps encryption has always been a double-edged sword. Encryption may eventually split into traditional and American circles. The past public chain wars will also be carried out in larger units. Under Trumps strong strategy and huge influence, this war may be very tragic, but the rebirth of encryption will inevitably go through this disaster.
