Morning Minute: Decrypt Names Trump as Crypto Person of the Year

🏆 Decrypt Names Trump Its Crypto Person of the Year

This one would’ve sounded insane just a few years ago.

Decrypt just named Donald Trump its Crypto Person of the Year.

📌 What Happened

Decrypt crowned Trump as its top crypto figure of the year, pointing to how deeply crypto has been pulled into mainstream U.S. politics during his campaign and presidency.

Under his administration, crypto went from being treated as a regulatory threat to something closer to a strategic asset.

Stablecoins, Bitcoin  mining, and market structure clarity all moved closer to the center of the policy conversation, even if the details are still being fought over.

Decrypt argued that no individual did more in 2024–2025 to accelerate crypto’s political relevance.

They also acknowledged some of the downsides of Trump’s crypto forays, including multiple NFT collections, meme coins and family-linked crypto business ventures.

And they gave airtime to Trump’s critics, who brought up several concerns with the Trump crypto links including conflict-of-interest concerns, undermining founding principles, corruption and pay-for-play, industry favoritism and the broader partisan politicization of crypto.

🗣️ What Are They Saying

“They’re trying to create a regulatory climate where you can scam whoever you want and nothing happens. None of that is really relevant to what we’re working on, or to Bitcoin.”

“If you want to make a token, and as long as you let the Trump family invest in it, then I guess sure, you’ll be fine.”

• Alex Gladstein, HRF Chief Strategy Officer

“Bitcoin aligns itself beautifully with liberalism, and liberalism is all about individual liberty, and civil rights, and freedom of expression. But now it’s associated with authoritarian-style politics, just because this bargain was made.”

“I’m definitely not against the government adopting or getting involved with Bitcoin,” he said. “I just am more concerned with the damage that we’re doing to Bitcoin’s reputation among the public.”

The difficulty comes in assessing whether that impact has been net positive or negative.

On the positive side, Trump has opened America’s doors to crypto again just a few years after Operation Chokepoint 2.0 almost shut it down completely.

He has set up task forces and ushered in the crypto regulatory era, building a foundation that will be hard to tear down.

As an immediate impact, the ETF floodgates have opened, banks and TradFi are embracing crypto, stablecoin adoption is soaring, ICOs are back and builders are comfortable launching companies and products in the US again.

Those are all big wins.

But at what cost?

On the negative side, Trump’s meme coin launch cast a shadow over his crypto legacy before it really even began. He set the tone right away that he would not be afraid to profit off of crypto.

Since then, his sons have become entangled in several crypto companies and launched their own protocol, World Liberty Financial.

Several crypto criminals have been pardoned, some of whom have made donations of some kind to Trump or his family’s projects in some capacity.

And crypto has become more partisan than ever, almost to the point where one could make the statement that Trump equals crypto.

So on one hand, crypto has been fully legitimized. But on the other, it has been delegitimized (or confirmed to be a sector to enrich scammers).

My view?

The positive outweighs the negative (though I admit there is a laundry list of negative actions and impacts from the Trump crypto regime).

But overall I feel that fully opening America’s doors to crypto, inviting a welcoming regulatory environment and ushering in the mainstream crypto era is a bigger net win.

Perhaps that’s the hopeless optimist in me.

We won’t fully know the answer for several years to come. And in that time, certainly Trump’s impact on crypto will grow even larger. Let’s hope it’s for the positive…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors were very red to start the week; BTC -3% at $87,200; ETH -6% at $2,950, BNB -2% at $868, SOL -3% at $128
• XDC (+4%), CC (+3%) and SKY (+2%) led top movers
• JPMorgan launched a tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum, using onchain rails to settle fund shares
• The Senate punted the crypto market-structure markup to next year, delaying near-term progress on a major U.S. framework bill
• Coinbase and Robinhood joined the new U.S. ‘Tech Force’ aimed at recruiting top engineers to build AI infra for the government
• MetaMask expanded beyond Ethereum by adding native Bitcoin support, letting users buy, send, and receive BTC inside the wallet
• PayPal applied for a bank charter in Utah as its next potential step into the traditional banking system
• Trump said he would “look at” pardoning Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez, directing the Attorney General to investigate the request ahead of his prison reporting date
• Grayscale argued quantum computing was unlikely to move crypto valuations in 2026, while warning chains still needed long-term post-quantum upgrade planning
• Bittensor (TAO) completed its first halving event with issuance dropping from 7,200 tokens/day to 3,600

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

In Memes / Onchain Movers

• Memecoin leaders are mostly red; DOGE -4%, Shiba -3%, PEPE -5%, PENGU -4%, BONK -4%, TRUMP -4%, SPX -7%, and FARTCOIN -5%
• PIPPIN rallied 28% to $500M mc, though onchain analysis shows it is 80% bundled
• SAROS (+90%), RCN (+30%), ARC (+25%) and SWARMS (+23%) led onchain Solana movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

• Circle announced the acquisition of the Interop Labs team but that their product the Axelar Network and its AXL token would not be acquired
• Yeet kicked off Big Moments 3: XMAS Joyride with a new format and big prizes
• Sports dot Fun shared new details for their ICO starting today, looking to raise $3M at $60M fdv across Legion and Kraken
• Ondo announced tokenized stocks and ETFs are coming to Solana
• Kalshi introduced prediction combos as their version of parlays

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• NFT leaders were mixed; Punks -2% at 27.2 ETH, Pudgy +2% at 4.55, BAYC +2% at 4.85 ETH; Hypurr’s -5% at 469 HYPE
• Veefriends (+23%) and Kodas (+12%) were notable movers
• OpenSea swept $1M in NFTs as rewards for their latest farming season
• Quirkies will launch an NFT Strategy token today via TokenWorks