In brief
- Trump Jr. described his experience with mainstream media as “a disaster,” likening their exclusion from coverage to being debanked.
- He said independent outlets, podcasts, and long-form formats fill gaps left by traditional press.
- Observers told Decrypt that credibility depends on transparency and accountability, regardless of the outlet.
Donald Trump Jr. told a jam-packed conference room at Token 2049 in Singapore how the media’s unfair treatment of his family had spurred them to create alternative forms of channeling attention and engagement.
Trump, the son of U.S. President Donald Trump and co-founder of World Liberty Financial, said that the crypto project resulted from the First Family’s efforts to foster friendlier coverage.
“I think my overall experience with the media has been, let’s call it, a disaster,” Trump Jr. said. “Where we’re starting to get a fair shake is that the media has discredited themselves so often and so much that the media, like finance, is shifting to alternate forms.”
Trump Jr. and his family have been increasingly active in the digital asset space through multiple projects that seem to have generated massive gains for them, but also drawn blowback from critics who believe the Trumps have been advancing their own interests.
Trump Jr. called “the independent journalism route, the podcasts, people who are talking long-form,” as part of a trend where communication can be construed as “not just delivering a sound bite for whatever corporate powers would have them be doing.”
He said these formats would enable “real” conversations, and offered an opportunity for people outside traditional media to fill a “void.” including his family.
“We got into crypto because—out of necessity—we were debanked, so we came up with a solution,” Trump Jr. said, pointing to how, in the same manner as the media, they were deplatformed, shut down, and thrown off “every platform imaginable.”
Trump Jr. and his brother, Eric Trump, have frequently spoken about facing challenges in the banking industry, with Eric saying earlier this year that “some of the biggest banks in the world” canceled their accounts after President Trump’s first term. Eric Trump further blamed “woke cancel culture” for the trend.
Trump’s comments drew largely favorable reviews from crypto industry observers.
In an interview with Decrypt, Tory Green, co-founder and chairman of decentralized GPU platform io.net, highlighted the importance of “transparency and accountability,” and said that mainstream media often overlooks important details about crypto, for example, which is “why independent outlets matter.”
Alluding to the president’s removal from social media platforms following the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack in 2021, Coin Bureau founder and CEO Nic Puckrin told Decrypt that “deplatforming” was wrong.
“You should have an opinion. You should be able to share it, right?” Puckrin said. “No matter what people think about it, you should be able to [opine], so deplatforming is bad,” although he added that Trump Jr.’s story was “a bit of a spin, of course.”
Cecilia Hsueh, chief strategy officer at MEXC, said that alternative media often did a better job of covering the crypto industry itself than mainstream outlets that miss the industry’s culture and pace.
“Crypto is very unique,” she said. “The way we do things, degen culture—it’s fast, it switches rapidly.”
She added: “Traditional media has “this perception [on crypto] that it’s a speculation first, and then they use that perception to look into what we are doing: all the initiatives, the creative ideas,” although she noted positive changes as “Bitcoin has become a mainstream asset.”
Decrypt reached out to World Liberty Finance and Donald Trump Jr. for additional comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
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