Trump family says U.S. dollar needs an upgrade, and they can do it

Since the dollar was created in 1792, U.S. presidents and their families have generally been content with the status quo of giving the national government an effective monopoly on printing money and outlawing the use of foreign currency.

Consider the launch of the nation’s initial coin offering dollar. It was a time when the U.S. government was struggling to overcome the dominance of Spanish octet pieces, which were widely used throughout the country at the time.

When presidents spoke about the dollar itself, it was usually to reiterate the U.S. government’s “strong dollar” policy.

This continued almost uninterrupted through 46 presidencies — until last March, when a company partially owned by President Donald Trump and his family began marketing an alternative to the dollar, a cryptocurrency called “USD1.”

Now the president’s two eldest sons tell CNBC on the sidelines of a daylong crypto event they’re hosting why that needs to change.

Marketed as a stablecoin, the value of USD1 would follow the dollar, just as when it was created in 1792 the dollar was initially pegged to the value of the then-dominant Spanish silver dollar.

The Trumps’ company, World Liberty Financial, touts USD1 as an improvement over the official US currency. The firm’s website brands its stablecoin as “Dollar. Raised.” And he calls the coin “still the US dollar, but for a new era.”

On Wednesday, the firm held its first World Freedom Forum at Mar-a-Lago, which is owned by President Trump and operated as the White House during the winter months.

The event, which took place just before the first anniversary of the launch of USD1, brought together financiers, technologists, television personalities, the president of world football organization FIFA and artist Nicki Minaj.

The message to attendees from the stage in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom beneath an enormous stylized golden eagle statue was that the old U.S. dollar needed to be modernized, that the private sector was the place to drive that innovation, and that stablecoins would help taxpayers by creating structural demand for U.S. government debt.

In fact, World Liberty supporters argue that the new cryptocurrency they are building is not a threat to the dollar, but will help ensure that the dollar remains dominant in global crypto finance because the value of USD1 is pegged to it.

But an important question is, if the dollar needs modernization, why should it be done by the private sector?

And why should the enterprise be in the private hands of the president and his family and not the U.S. Treasury?

CNBC asked these questions to the president’s sons, World Liberty Financial co-founder Donald Trump Jr., at a small event venue right next to Mar-a-Lago’s swimming pool. and asked Eric Trump.

“This will actually maintain dollar hegemony,” Donald Trump Jr. replied.

“Crypto companies are among the world’s top five buyers,” he said. “This will actually stabilize the U.S. dollar and do everything we need.”

He argued that the federal government and major Wall Street banking system were not agile or innovative enough to make the necessary changes.

“As Americans, we will lead,” Eric Trump said. “Who are you going to leave this to, JPMorgan? Are you going to leave this to the federal government?”

Eric Trump sees Wall Street as too complacent and therefore ripe for technological disruption.

“Do you think the big banks would actually do this?” he asked. “And the reason I say that is because there have been 50 years of bankers working six hours a day. They have a two-hour lunch break. They usually leave the office at four in the afternoon.”

Eric and Donald Jr. make it clear that the animating force behind their venture is not the inventor’s glee at building a better mousetrap or the insider’s frustration at legacy companies that can’t or won’t adapt to the future.

Instead, what drives them is pure revenge.

The Trump brothers see the broader financial system as part of an institution that unfairly excluded them after their father left power in 2021; Following the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, the banking system generally refused to do business with the Trump family.

Donald Trump Jr. “You know, we didn’t get into crypto because we were pioneers,” he said in an interview with CNBC’s Sara Eisen on Wednesday. “We got into this out of necessity. They basically forced us into it.”

Eric Trump told Eisen: “We were the most canceled people in the world in 2020 and 2021, and it’s really cool to almost have this revenge where all of a sudden we’re pushing an agenda.”

“Our agenda was to modernize finance and make sure this never happens to anyone again,” Eric Trump said.

Donald Trump Jr. said he concluded that the traditional banking system is a “Ponzi scheme.”

“They created this monster,” Trump Jr. said, pointing to the moment when he claimed that “every major bank in the world had every major bank in the world to make sure they did nothing wrong,” when Trump and other conservatives claimed their accounts were “closing banks based on the fact that we all wear a hat that says, ‘Make America Great Again.’”

Eric Trump recalled that the time his father spent outside the White House between presidencies was a traumatic time for the family.

“These are commercial buildings, residential buildings, golf courses all over the world. These are not political entities, and they were pulling these accounts from us as if we were complete dogs,” Eric Trump said.

“We couldn’t pay our vendors, we couldn’t pay our employees. So we said, listen, there’s got to be a better way.”

The message, according to Eric Trump, is that the Trump family will always strike back: When social media companies kicked his father off their platforms, President Trump created his own Truth Social media platform. When the banking industry rejected the Trump family’s business, the family took matters into their own hands.

That’s why a president’s family is creating an improved American currency for the first time since 1792.

Call it Real Dollar.