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⌐◪-◪ → Last night, fellow CryptoPunk and web3 influencer Farokh interviewed former President Donald Trump on Twitter Spaces. Before we dive in, join me in congratulating Farokh on the biggest interview of his life.

This interview was LONG (2.5hrs), so I’m breaking today’s insights into two parts: first, the opening segment with Trump, then the following segment with his sons + the World Liberty Financial team.

My biggest takeaways from the interview are as follows:

• The mere fact this happened is a big deal. We have a former/future President talking about crypto/NFTs at length with crypto natives.

• Trump credits both his kids and his successful NFT trading card sales for his change of heart on crypto.

• Trump lacks a deep understanding of crypto, but he’s clearly fully bought in — he’ll need to rely on strong advisors.

• My favorite quote of the night was probably when Trump said, “Barron knows so much about this… he’s got four wallets or something.”

What was disappointing, but perhaps for the best, was seeing how removed Trump himself is from World Liberty Financial.

Meanwhile, here’s how the market reacted to both the interview and the second assassination attempt:

• Trump memecoins fall

• Trump polymarket odds unchanged

• Trump.eth ENS domain sells for 48.4 ETH or $110,789

Hopefully, we see Kamala Harris do an interview with crypto natives soon. Frankly, I think she has a real opportunity to flex equal or greater knowledge than Trump on why crypto matters and what she can do to help.

⌐◪-◪ → The second portion of last night’s Twitter Spaces featured Farokh, Trump’s sons, and the World Liberty Financial team.

Before diving into details on World Liberty Financial, they had a casual chat about crypto, why it’s important, and the challenges the industry is facing today.

While I didn’t learn anything new here (just the usual talking points), I got the feeling that Donald Junior and Eric Trump actually understand and care about the space. Now, do they understand and care about it the way we do? Probably not. But are they leading the way for other politicians? Yes.

At this point, they’ve chosen to die on the crypto hill. They’re fully bought in.

As for what World Liberty Financial actually is, that’s still not entirely clear, but here’s what we learned from Trump’s sons and their team:

• They don’t want to reinvent the wheel; they want to take the best of DeFi and bring it all into one platform.

• They want to focus on very simple things, like bringing real yield to the average Joe, with a heavy emphasis on usability (stupid simple UI/UX).

• The goal is to onboard as many people as possible and drive global dominance for the dollar through the power of stablecoins.

• There will be a non-transferable governance token ($WFLI) with a public sale to accredited investors only (see token allocation).

The sentiment on Twitter is mixed, and a lot of people are skeptical of the project. Some of the major objections/criticisms include:

• Accredited investor requirement is tone deaf/ironic

• Non-transferrable could mean only insiders can dump

• Partner, Chase Herro is a self-declared “dirtbag of the internet”

• Partner, Zachary Folkman owned biz on how to seduce women

Note, this isn’t an endorsement of those claims, just a summary of how people are reacting and what they’re saying.

Anyway, there’s still a lot we don’t know, and much of the project remains a mystery. There’s plenty of reason to stay suspicious. At the end of the day, their success or failure will be on-chain for the world to see.

For a bit of comedic relief, my favorite take of the evening came from Cheryl Douglass at Seed Club, who tweeted, “Imagine coming off a 2nd assassination attempt to shill a token on a space with Farokh.”

⌐◪-◪ → While Farokh was interviewing Donald Trump, a group of KOLs — that nobody has ever heard of — won KOL awards in Singapore.

No, Farokh did not receive one.

It’s obvious these accounts bought their followers/likes; anyone with two brain cells could figure that out. But that didn’t stop the event organizers from giving them awards — super cringe.

Want to have a laugh? Check out this exchange — @0xmidjet DM’d one of them with a simple “hey” on Telegram, and this was the response.

If you ever wanted to know what Specs is NOT about, this is it. These characters and their behavior represent the anti-vision for this community.

Genuinely curious, does anyone recognize a single one of these KOLs?

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