HEATH MUCHENA: Trump, bitcoin and the billionaire coup that could redefine global finance

You might be distracted by the daily soap opera of politics — the tweets, the sound bites, the headline-grabbing salvos lobbed by Donald Trump and his band of billionaire confidants. But peel back the theatrics and something far more consequential is unfolding, quietly but decisively. 

America's financial architecture is being rewritten, and bitcoin, stablecoins and decentralised finance are poised to emerge not as fringe alternatives but as core pillars of this new order. 

At the heart of it is a simple truth: Trump is a real estate magnate, not an austerity hawk. His playbook has always been the same — borrow big, inflate bigger and leave creditors holding the bag.

Now, Trump’s America First 2.0 strategy is turbocharged by the most powerful levers of the US financial system, the Federal Reserve and a hand-picked cadre of Silicon Valley heavyweights. 

What’s the easiest way to force the Fed’s hand in cutting rates? Manufacture a recession. Trump’s newly minted department of government efficiency — run by none other than Elon Musk — is already gutting bureaucracies, freezing federal contracts and threatening layoffs by the hundreds of thousands. The message is clear: shrink government spending, shrink demand and push the economy towards the edge. 

But this isn’t about balanced budgets or fiscal prudence. It’s about engineering conditions that make rate cuts and money printing inevitable. Every modern recession has been met with the same reflex: slashing rates and injecting liquidity. Trump knows it, Musk knows it and markets know it. 

The Fed has no choice. Trillions in US corporate and government debt need to be rolled over this year. Let rates stay high and the debt pyramid collapses. Lower them, and the system staggers on — fuelled by cheaper credit and, inevitably, more money in circulation. 

Transformative tool

Trump’s financial chessboard doesn’t stop at interest rates. Enter David Sacks, PayPal veteran, tech venture capitalist and now America’s AI and crypto tsar. Sacks has been handed two of the most transformative tools of the 21st century: cryptocurrency and AI. His task? Undo years of regulatory hostility and embed crypto at the core of US financial strategy. 

Under Sacks’ stewardship Trump’s administration is already moving fast: 

• Launching a strategic bitcoin reserve, seeded by more than $17bn in bitcoin seized by law enforcement. 
• Pushing stablecoin legislation to legitimise digital dollars without the Fed’s micromanagement. 
• Reversing Securities & Exchange Commission policies that treated crypto like a threat rather than an innovation. 

For the first time the US is positioning bitcoin not as a speculative asset but as a strategic reserve, akin to gold. It’s a stark acknowledgment: in a world drowning in fiat liabilities, decentralised, hard-capped digital assets offer something central banks can’t print — credibility. 

Fresh liquidity

History tells us what happens when liquidity floods the system. During Covid-19 $4-trillion in new credit sent bitcoin soaring 24-fold. Analysts estimate Trump's recession strategy, combined with Fed capitulation, could inject $3-trillion to $3.5-trillion in fresh liquidity — between rate cuts, halted quantitative tightening and potential quantitative easing reboots. 

That’s not fantasy; it’s arithmetic. A 10-times bitcoin rally off the back of $3-trillion in printing isn’t a wild prediction. It’s a logical extrapolation from what we’ve already seen. And while bitcoin soaks up headlines, the infrastructure being laid beneath — decentralised finance — is arguably the more revolutionary shift. 

The Trump-Sacks blueprint isn’t just about deregulating crypto; it’s about creating conditions where capital flows freely, bypassing Wall Street gatekeepers, brokerages and banks. In a world where the US government is happy to print and restructure its way out of debt, DeFi becomes the more transparent, more efficient, and ultimately, more trustworthy system. 

This isn’t contained to US borders. China, Japan, Europe — every major economy will follow America’s liquidity moves. Currency wars will intensify, inflation will be tolerated and centralised financial controls will fray under the pressure. 

As fiat regimes soften and sovereign debts pile higher, decentralised protocols offer an immutable alternative. Bitcoin doesn’t bend to policymakers. DeFi protocols don’t discriminate. This is why capital — institutional, corporate, retail — is slowly, then suddenly, flowing towards crypto. 

Trump may not intend to spark a global financial reset. But his policies — by necessity, not ideology — are accelerating the shift away from old-world fiat systems. The stage is set: Musk is cutting, Sacks is deregulating, Powell will print and bitcoin stands ready. 

Fiat systems can only stretch so far before something breaks. The next chapter of finance won’t be written by central banks but by open, decentralised networks. Whether you like Trump or loathe him, the outcome is the same: bitcoin wins. DeFi scales and the old order dissolves. 

• Muchena is founder of Proudly Associated and author of “Artificial Intelligence Applied” and “Tokenized Trillions”.