In mid-December, two jubilant groups came together to celebrate their recent, interconnected turns in fortune: the freewheeling cryptocurrency industry and the family of the victorious US president-elect Donald Trump.
Trump’s second son, Eric, was the star attraction at the Bitcoin Mena 2024 conference in Abu Dhabi on December 10. In front of a whooping crowd of industry figures, Eric Trump assured them that his father would keep his promises to be “the most pro-crypto president” yet. Indeed, he drew a link between the two movements as victims of the same establishment.
“The nastiness in the system . . . guys, they made our life miserable,” he said, of the US government. “But had it not been for those attacks, I don’t think my eyes would have been as open to the crypto industry . . . I saw them come after you. I saw them strip your bank accounts.”