Trump faces difficult Midterm choice: crypto or Wall Street donations

The Midterms are coming. These are the elections held every four years in the United States in between presidential ones. This time, Trump seems to have to choose between crypto and Wall Street as a sponsor for his election campaign, as the two industries haven’t meshed well since the expansion of stablecoins.

Emotions are running so high that Jamie Dimon, the well-known CEO of investment bank JPMorgan, declared last month at Davos that Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase (the largest crypto platform in the United States), is simply “full of shit.”

Clarity Act

Trump was elected last year thanks to both the dissatisfaction of many Americans with the economy and the large sums of sponsorship money he received (which allowed widespread publicity and TV commercials). His biggest sponsor was the crypto industry, closely followed by Wall Street. However, ever since the introduction of the Genius Act, the law that makes it easier for stablecoin issuers to offer things like online bank accounts, crypto and Wall Street have been at odds. Consequently, Trump can hardly accept significant funding from the crypto world anymore without offending Wall Street.

That’s why Wall Street has been pushing for a new law for several weeks, called the “Clarity Act,” which should make it clear that Americans can safely store their money in banks, but not in the crypto world. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated last week that the US federal government would not bail out Bitcoin if its price completely collapsed.

Banks want less growth for crypto, as this threatens their own long-term prospects. It seems that Trump, who has made billions thanks to his own memecoin and his crypto company World Liberty Financial, will have to make a choice in the Midterms: accept sponsorship from either crypto or Wall Street. Both of them is no longer an option.