In his excellent new book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, the independent left wing business journalist Jacob Silverman reports a particularly pungent utterance from a MAGA luminary that seems to perfectly embody the Trump family’s business practices. In a 2018 video, Chase Herro–a partner of the Trump Organization in launching the cryptocurrency enterprise World Liberty Financial–offered the following gem: “You can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story’s right, because people will buy it. I’m not going to question the right and wrong of all that.” 

Herro’s bit of wisdom describes a group of economic operators whom Samuel Farber, in a 2018 Jacobin article, called lumpen capitalists–(what Karl Marx, in the 19th century, called lumpenbourgeoisie). All capitalists resort to unethical practices to some degree as they exploit labor and resources in order to maximize profit. But lumpen capitalists put pure con artistry front and center of their operations. Like Trump, they are most comfortable not in actually owning and operating businesses but in taking risks with other people’s money: speculating in real estate and stocks, multi-level marketing scams, cryptocurrency.

The ponzi scheme that was Trump University was a particularly stark example of Trump’s lumpen capitalism; he settled with his victims through a $25 million payout (without admitting guilt) after his first presidential election in 2016. The episode is one of many marking our 45th and 47th president as a con man: in advertisements for the university he claimed to have personally handpicked its so-called faculty, but in sworn depositions, as CNN reported in 2016, Trump “failed to recognize the name of a single presenter or teacher at his real estate seminars. He also confirmed that he had nothing to do with the selection process of instructors who taught at the school’s events or mentors for the school’s ‘Gold Elite’ programs.” Many of the school’s instructors had “questionable credentials and inflated resumes.” 

Trump and Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is lumpen capitalism in its purest essence. Silverman writes that in the roughly fifteen years it has been in public circulation, none of the promises made by the grifters pushing it about its eventual widespread public use or its empowerment of ordinary people have come to fruition. Cryptocurrency’s  only real  function so far seems to be  as a money laundering tool for drug traffickers, sex traffickers and similar black market operators. Indeed,  Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance (the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange), served four months in a US prison in 2024 after being charged by the Biden Justice Department for allowing Binance to be used as a money laundering vehicle for such operators. Trump recently pardoned Zhao (allowing him to resume office as Binance’s CEO) after Binance purchased $2 billion worth of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin USD1. Similarly, in February, Trump’s administration paused a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation for civil fraud into the billionaire crypto mogul (and World Liberty Financial investor) Justin Sun after the latter began purchasing multiple Trump Organization cryptocurrencies at a total that would eventually reach $100 million

 It is no surprise that the Trump Organization–led by Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr.–through its part ownership of World Liberty Financial and other crypto ventures, has used Donald Trump’s occupation of the White House to acquire vast new riches. World Liberty Financial’s offerings and the other crypto products promoted by the Trump organization are clearly items which have no practical use in the real world, in spite of the company’s assertions to the contrary. 

 At the same time, Reuters reported last month that for the first half of this year the Trump Organization made $864 million, 17 times the $51 million it earned a year earlier. Almost all of the revenue increase was derived from the family’s crypto investments, mostly made by non-US citizens–including representatives of the sovereign wealth funds of middle eastern dictatorships like the United Arab Emirates– seeking influence with the White House and the Trump organization. Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush told Reuters that these blatant conflicts of interests were “legal but unethical”– legal so long as members of the Trump Organization did not explicitly promise their interlocutors favorable treatment in the White House if they purchased Trump cryptocurrency. Trump is barred from accessing this crypto income while president but will be free to put his hands on it once he leaves office.

Lumpen Capitalism, Argentine Style

Trump’s close political ally and  fellow right wing carnival barker, Argentinian president Javier Milei–whose year and a half of turbocharged right wing libertarian economic policies caused his country’s economy to collapse, leading the Trump administration to provide him with a $40 billion bailout–has gotten his grubby hands into crypto in ways that might make even Trump blush. 

 Mllei–whom Argentine academic Rolando Astarita describes as “an extreme case of the twenty-first century lumpenbourgeoisie”–was involved in February in what is called a “rug pull ” in the crypto industry, similar to a “pump and dump” in the stock market. Late in the day on February 14th, minutes after the memecoin $Libra went public, Milei tweeted that purchasing it would help subsidize Argentinian entrepreneurs and promote his country’s economic development.

 Milei did not explain the exact process by which purchasing $Libra would produce these beneficial economic results, most likely because no such process existed and he was knowingly pushing a scam. Spurred by Milei’s claim,  the price of $Libra went over the course of several hours from $0.25 to $5.2; then, just as quickly, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of it were sold off and the price plummeted to $0.2. Around midnight, on February 15th, Millei deleted his tweet, claiming he was “not aware of the details of the project and having become aware of it, I decided not to continue spreading the word.” 

. A small group of people who got in early (and sold early) on the memecoin made tens of millions of dollars but a much larger group of people also lost tens of millions of dollars. Astarita writes that Milei was likely secretly compensated for this episode; he has participated in multiple similar “rug pulls” in recent years, apparently facilitated in large part by bribes to members of his inner circle.  Milei’s presidency has been implicated in numerous corruption scandals, with members of his inner circle (particularly his sister Karina) alleged to have accepted bribes from anyone willing to spend the money. 

Crypto Capitalism: Mainstream Capitalism? 

Although as late as 2021, even Donald Trump denounced crypto as a scam, it has since acquired more and more cachet in mainstream American finance–almost entirely as a speculative investment since there remains no evidence that cryptocurrency has any value in the real world. It has been marketed as a way for ordinary Americans to stick it to Wall Street banks but those same banks have been buying it in large quantities. 

During the 2024 US presidential election, the crypto industry donated more than $245 million to political organizations and Super Pacs. Upset by the Biden administration’s tight regulations of crypto products, the industry has been hostile to Democrats in a majority of cases. However there are indications that Democratic leaders are keen to catch up to Republicans in receiving the industry’s fundraising largesse by being more solicitous of the industry’s needs. 

Cryptocurrency is only an extreme manifestation of what President Biden alluded to in his farewell address: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influences that literally threatens our entire democracy.” As Silverman notes in his book, Biden’s words ring hollow: Democrats, including Biden himself, have played a major role in constructing that oligarchy. 

Silverman writes that when Biden received Trump at the White House after the November 2024 election and greeted the lumpen capitalist oligarch with the words “welcome home,” he was expressing something beyond mere politeness. The Trump-Biden meeting was “just another wing of the ruling elite taking back the keys” of the executive branch from a rival wing of that elite. For all the extreme political polarization of the Trump era, if you look a little beneath the surface of the political theater staged for public consumption, you find that MAGA Republicans actually have a fair amount in common with their Democrat enemies.