Bitcoin Adoption Was Based on Faith. Is Trump the New Messiah?
How a Real Estate Mogul Became the Unlikely Prophet of Digital Money
Is it hyperbolic to call Trump crypto’s messiah?
Consider the parallels: A figure rejected by the establishment who undergoes persecution, experiences conversion, then leads followers to the promised land of financial freedom.
Trump’s crypto evangelism has unique power because it comes from lived experience. He’s not a tech billionaire preaching to the converted — he’s a traditional businessman who discovered crypto’s power through necessity.
The May 22nd memecoin dinner crystallized this dynamic. The President celebrated not with Wall Street titans, but with crypto believers. The revolution had captured the palace.
On May 22, 2025, as Bitcoin touched $112,000 on the fifteenth anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day, something extraordinary happened in the corridors of power. President Donald Trump, the same man who once called Bitcoin a “scam,” hosted a dinner at his golf club exclusively for holders of his $TRUMP memecoin. The Messiah and chosen apostles sharing a meal? Maybe I am getting ahead of myself.
This was the culmination of perhaps the most unlikely conversion story in modern financial history — the transformation of a traditional real estate empire into crypto evangelism, and with it, the mainstreaming of what was once considered digital voodoo by Wall Street’s finest.
The Original Sin: Building Faith in Mathematical Money
When Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper on October 31, 2008 — Halloween, appropriately — he was asking humanity to believe in something that had never existed: money backed not by governments or gold, but by mathematics and collective belief.
Bitcoin’s value proposition required millions of people to simultaneously agree that lines of computer code were worth something. No industrial application like oil. No government backing like the dollar. No physical scarcity like gold. Just math, cryptography, and faith.
The Bitcoin Timeline:
- 2009: Genesis block mined, Bitcoin worth $0
- 2010: 10,000 BTC for two pizzas ($0.0025 per Bitcoin)
- 2011: Bitcoin reaches dollar parity
- 2013: First major boom to $1,000, followed by 85% crash
- 2017: Mainstream attention peaks at $19,783
- 2021: Tesla buys $1.5 billion, price hits $69,000
- 2024: ETF approvals change everything
- 2025: $112,000 and the Trump conversion
Today, an estimated 106 million people worldwide own Bitcoin — roughly 1.3% of the global population have placed their faith in this grand experiment.
The Persecution: When Traditional Finance Fought Back
For over a decade, Bitcoin faced institutional persecution. The financial establishment’s hostility was swift and severe:
- Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a “fraud”
- Warren Buffett dismissed it as “rat poison squared”
- The SEC waged a “war on crypto” under Gary Gensler
- Banks systematically “de-banked” crypto businesses
- Payment processors blocked crypto transactions
The Trump family, despite their wealth and connections, found themselves increasingly marginalized by traditional financial institutions. Major banks distanced themselves from Trump properties. Payment processors restricted access.
This was Trump’s “Damascus Road moment” — when traditional finance de-banks you, Bitcoin’s promise of financial sovereignty suddenly looks less like extremism and more like survival.
The Conversion: How the Persecuted Became the Prophet
The Trump family’s crypto journey was driven by necessity, opportunity, and eventually, genuine belief:
Phase 1: Practical adoption as traditional payment rails became unreliable
Phase 2: World Liberty Financial DeFi venture (2024)
Phase 3: $TRUMP memecoin launch (January 2025)
The memecoin was genius — Trump created a direct financial relationship with supporters that bypassed every traditional institution that had rejected him. No banks, no payment processors, no establishment approval needed.
By inauguration, Trump wasn’t just crypto-curious. He was a true believer who had experienced firsthand the liberating power of decentralized money.
The Tipping Point: When Institutions Capitulated
Malcolm Gladwell; the author of the famous book “Tipping Point” teaches us that social epidemics build slowly, reach a tipping point, then spread rapidly. Bitcoin’s tipping point came in 2024–2025, with Trump as both catalyst and beneficiary.
Trump Administration Crypto Timeline:
- January 2025: Inaugurated with crypto wallet in pocket
- February 2025: Strategic Bitcoin Reserve executive order
- March 2025: First government Bitcoin purchases
- April 2025: SEC reverses anti-crypto enforcement
- May 2025: GENIUS Act passes Congress
The Adoption Numbers Tell the Story:
- Bitcoin ETF assets: $108 billion in first year
- Corporate Bitcoin holdings: Over $200 billion
- Government holdings: 15 countries now hold Bitcoin reserves
- DeFi total value locked: Approaching $200 billion
- Stablecoin market cap: $256 billion and growing
This wasn’t just price appreciation — this was institutional capitulation.
The Messiah Complex: Trump as Crypto’s Unlikely Savior
Is it hyperbolic to call Trump crypto’s messiah?
Consider the parallels:
A figure rejected by the establishment who undergoes persecution, experiences conversion, then leads followers to the promised land of financial freedom.
Trump’s crypto evangelism has unique power because it comes from lived experience. He’s not a tech billionaire preaching to the converted — he’s a traditional businessman who discovered crypto’s power through necessity.
The May 22nd memecoin dinner crystallized this dynamic. The President celebrated not with Wall Street titans, but with crypto believers. The revolution had captured the palace.
The Transformation: How Crypto Changes Everything
We’re witnessing something comparable to electricity or the internet — infrastructure that enables entirely new ways of organizing human activity.
How Crypto Transforms Money:
- Speed: Cross-border payments happen in seconds, not days
- Access: 1.7 billion unbanked people can participate in global finance
- Transparency: Every transaction recorded on immutable public ledgers
- Sovereignty: Individuals control wealth without institutional permission
- Programmability: Money can execute complex logic automatically
Behavioral Changes:
- A generation growing up controlling money directly
- Learning to verify transactions instead of trusting intermediaries
- Experiencing financial relationships without government permission
DeFi exemplifies this transformation — offering lending, borrowing, trading, and insurance without traditional financial institutions. This isn’t just innovation — it’s an entirely parallel financial system.
The Network Effect: When Faith Becomes Self-Fulfilling
The genius of Satoshi’s design was building network effects into Bitcoin’s architecture. The more people believe, the more secure the network becomes. The more secure the network, the more people believe.
We’re seeing this accelerate under Trump:
- Each government Bitcoin purchase validates crypto for other governments
- Each corporate adoption legitimizes crypto for other corporations
- Each ETF inflow signals institutional acceptance
The faith-based foundation that seemed like Bitcoin’s weakness became its greatest strength.
The Disruption Parallel: Trade Wars and Crypto Wars
Trump has weaponized disruption to reshape established systems — both in international trade and crypto adoption.
Parallel Strategies:
- Tariff policies designed to alter global trade relationships
- Crypto policies designed to position America as leader of the next financial system
- Same ruthless pragmatism in both approaches
This creates compound effects:
- As traditional financial relationships strain under trade tensions, crypto offers alternative rails
- As dollar dominance faces challenges, Bitcoin emerges as neutral reserve asset
- We’re living through simultaneous disruption of international trade AND international money
The Philosophical Transformation
We’re witnessing humanity’s transition from trust-based to verification-based systems.
The Old Way:
- Kings enforce property rights
- Banks facilitate transactions
- Governments issue currency
- Civilization rests on trusting institutions
The New Way:
- Smart contracts execute automatically
- Cryptographic proofs verify claims without trusted parties
- Decentralized networks reach consensus without central authorities
We’re moving from “trust but don’t verify” to “don’t trust, verify.” From institutional faith to mathematical certainty.
The End of the Beginning
As Bitcoin trades at levels that seemed impossible just years ago, the price isn’t the story — the adoption is the story. The conversion of skeptics into believers is the story.
Trump’s role as crypto’s unlikely messiah will be debated for decades. Was he genuine convert or opportunistic politician? The result is the same: the most powerful person in the world actively promotes technologies that redistribute power from institutions to individuals.
What We’re Witnessing:
- Banking disintermediated by DeFi
- Trading democratized by technology
- International commerce restructured by programmable currencies
- All happening with explicit government support
The New Faith: From Skepticism to Certainty
Sixteen years ago, Bitcoin required pure faith. Today, that faith has been validated by adoption, institutionalization, and governmental embrace.
The real validation isn’t price or political support — it’s behavioral change. When your neighbor buys Bitcoin, when your pension fund allocates to crypto ETFs, when your government holds Bitcoin reserves, the revolution has already happened.
Trump may or may not be crypto’s messiah. But he’s undoubtedly its most effective evangelist — living proof that the revolution has reached the mainstream and converted even its most unlikely prospects.
The age of faith-based adoption is ending. The age of obvious utility has begun. And in that transition, we glimpse a world where technology doesn’t just augment human capability — it fundamentally restructures human society.
The revolution isn’t coming. It’s here. And it’s just getting started.
Welcome to the future. Your faith is no longer required — only your participation.
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