https://anchor.fm/s/4fa795b4/podcast/rss?djt
Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin discuss DJT, which is not Donald Trump's official token, and it seems likely Barron will not even claim this mess that Martin Shkreli embroiled them all in.
This podcast was recorded on June 22nd, 2024.
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English Transcript:
00:00:05:03 - 00:00:11:22
Cas Piancey
Welcome back everyone. I am Cas Pianey. I'm joined, as usual, by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett Tomlin. How are you today?
00:00:12:00 - 00:00:13:07
Bennett Tomlin
I'm doing well. How are you, Cas?
00:00:13:07 - 00:00:22:11
Cas Piancey
I'm annoyed, and that's usually. That's usually when we end up talking is when I just get pissed off and annoyed by something enough that we have to record about it.
00:00:22:11 - 00:00:29:14
Cas Piancey
and today we're going to be discussing the DJT token, Donald J. Trump token,
00:00:29:14 - 00:00:39:10
Cas Piancey
which a few days ago, it's a Solana based meme coin that was started a few days ago and reported on by a,
00:00:39:10 - 00:00:48:13
Cas Piancey
I'm going to call them a blog. I guess they like to pretend they're news, but, a blog called Pirate Wires, that is, I believe Peter Thiel funded.
00:00:48:13 - 00:00:58:15
Cas Piancey
It's at least, operated by one of the vice presidents, CMO of the Founders Fund, which is Peter Thiel's VC.
00:00:58:15 - 00:01:22:19
Cas Piancey
so they reported that this token had been created and that Barron Trump, who is Trump's youngest son, just turned 18 a few months ago, that he was the one behind it. and since then, it's been just a complete clusterfuck of nonsense, including the pirate wires reporting, air quotes there for anyone listening and not watching.
00:01:22:19 - 00:01:26:00
Cas Piancey
do you have anything you want to say before I continue to rant here?
00:01:26:00 - 00:01:31:01
Bennett Tomlin
I think you should take this. You should just go into this official Trump token.
00:01:31:01 - 00:01:45:22
Cas Piancey
Yeah. So Pirate Wire's reported it as the official Trump token. per conversations, that's that's what they said. it's since been. I think Martin Shkreli has since stated that he
00:01:45:22 - 00:01:58:04
Cas Piancey
got Barron Trump in touch with the pirate wires. Guys, and I think Michael Solana, the, one at Pirate Wires has confirmed as much.
00:01:58:04 - 00:01:59:19
Cas Piancey
Why am I bringing up Martin Shkreli?
00:01:59:19 - 00:02:23:09
Cas Piancey
Well, it turns out that this coin was created more or less. So this this is Martin Shkreli story. I'll go ahead and just lead with that. Even though after Pirate Wires reported this, Martin Shkreli distanced himself, did say that it was absolutely real. He knew it was real, said he wasn't necessarily involved, but that he knew that it was definitely real.
00:02:23:11 - 00:02:48:17
Cas Piancey
Slowly that began to devolve and he finally owned up to the idea that, yeah, okay, I admit it. I was one of three people involved in this. Now, those three people, according to Martin Shkreli, are Martin Shkreli. But by the way, Bennett, can you just if anyone I assume everyone knows who Martin Shkreli is, can you just tell anyone who's unfamiliar with him like what he's known for?
00:02:48:17 - 00:02:49:04
Cas Piancey
I guess.
00:02:49:04 - 00:03:12:23
Bennett Tomlin
is a financial criminal and firm. A bro who jacked up the prices of some lifesaving medications and eventually went to prison. Related to, I think, misstatements surrounding, like, the, financials of his firm after he jacked up the prices of those lifesaving medications. He's also a really big Wu-Tang clan fan.
00:03:12:23 - 00:03:31:12
Cas Piancey
At least he was. I don't know if he has anymore. I know they've also kind of disowned him. he. The reason Bennett brings that up is because Martin Shkreli famously purchased Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which was a one of one album by the Wu-Tang clan that sold for like $1.5 million or something.
00:03:31:12 - 00:03:40:02
Cas Piancey
a lot of, I believe I've seen quotes from, I think it was Method Man who who just simply hated the idea of from the very beginning.
00:03:40:06 - 00:04:04:04
Cas Piancey
I think a lot of these, a lot of the members of Wu-Tang are pretty divided on the concept of the album, even. But basically it was supposed to go unreleased for until like 2088 or something like that. 2188 I don't even remember how long it is, but it's supposed to not get released. Martin Shkreli has already admitted that he gave out copies to people, and that he still has a copy.
00:04:04:06 - 00:04:31:07
Cas Piancey
I don't actually know the the the rules and regulations regarding that. And if noncommercial distribution is okay, that it might it might be. I actually have no idea. But that's besides the point. We're here to talk about this token. so the reason Martin Shkreli is involved apparently is because this is according to again, according to Martin Shkreli, there's no other source for this because everybody involved has denied, denied or not.
00:04:31:09 - 00:04:58:15
Cas Piancey
That's that's incorrect. They haven't denied. They just haven't said anything about it. Nobody is talking. except for Martin Shkreli, who is talking all of the time. And what Martin claims is that he worked with I'm not going to state the guy's name because he's 17 years old, but we'll just call him cam. he worked with a guy named cam, who was interning at his company.
00:04:58:16 - 00:05:27:07
Cas Piancey
cam is 17 years old. He is not yet an adult, so he's working with a 17 year old minor. If that minor's family, you know, guardians gave permissions that they wanted him to work with Martin Shkreli. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. So I like I'm not trying to paint a picture of anything other than I taking financial advice from a convicted financial felon as a 17 year old, like, I don't think my parents would be very open to that.
00:05:27:07 - 00:05:57:20
Cas Piancey
When I was 17. I don't think most parents necessarily would be, but I don't know the backstory here, so I'm not going to pretend I do. but okay, so this 17 year old was interning. This 17 year old was good friends with Barron Trump, apparently, and reached out to Barron. And Barron said he wanted to start a meme coin because his brother, Donald Trump Jr wanted to start a meme coin and he wanted to do it first.
00:05:57:22 - 00:06:00:09
Cas Piancey
So why not reach out to Martin Shkreli? I mean,
00:06:00:12 - 00:06:02:19
Bennett Tomlin
Why not? Why not?
00:06:02:19 - 00:06:22:05
Cas Piancey
Yeah, I mean, there's probably hundreds if not thousands of people who would be better to discuss this with. Considering Martin Shkreli is expertise, is not involved in cryptocurrency ever. Like I don't think anyone has ever claimed that. Can you just talk about, Martin Shkreli? Do you remember that?
00:06:22:05 - 00:06:28:05
Bennett Tomlin
Was that his earlier project that got hacked after he downloaded a virus he thought was pornography?
00:06:28:09 - 00:06:35:02
Cas Piancey
That's right, that's right. That's the summary. Bennet just gave you the summary. everyone thought that he had rubbed his own project.
00:06:35:15 - 00:06:45:05
Bennett Tomlin
Which, I mean, did he ever hire, like, a forensic security auditing firm to come in and prove that it wasn't a cell phone pretending to be something else?
00:06:45:05 - 00:06:49:00
Cas Piancey
so here's something I will say about this, which I think is kind of interesting, is that,
00:06:49:00 - 00:07:04:19
Cas Piancey
ZachXBT got involved. If anyone's unfamiliar, we've had him on a previous episode of the show. he's widely known as, like, the cryptocurrency sleuth detective, the one who finds things out that people don't want to be found out.
00:07:04:19 - 00:07:06:04
Cas Piancey
and he is involved in this story as well.
00:07:06:04 - 00:07:28:00
Cas Piancey
We'll get there. But last time, Zach did show that it wasn't Martin Shkreli just draining his own project he had. Yes. Like been victim of a drainer. Whether that was at the hands of downloading porn or not. I mean, I don't know why Martin would make that up. That. That just seems like a it makes sense to me.
00:07:28:00 - 00:07:45:02
Cas Piancey
so that's what happened with Martin's first cryptocurrency project. so why anyone would think, oh, that's who I'm going to, that's who I'm going to go to. And get get them to help me with this. I don't know. I don't fully understand that, but. Okay. I'm going to presume that this is all
00:07:45:02 - 00:07:46:15
Cas Piancey
don't know, no one knows.
00:07:46:15 - 00:07:49:22
Cas Piancey
There's been no proof really shown, but. Yeah. So
00:07:49:22 - 00:08:01:15
Cas Piancey
at some point, before Martin admits that he is a part of this project, Arkham Intelligence, which is a, How would you describe them? Bennett.
00:08:01:15 - 00:08:16:02
Bennett Tomlin
They are a blockchain intelligence firm. They do their best to label addresses and wallets as associated with certain entities, and then track and highlight transactions between those entities.
00:08:16:06 - 00:08:31:13
Cas Piancey
I think they were widely disparaged when they first came out. if I recall correctly, largely because it seemed like a lot of former government individuals or the government itself was working with, with them.
00:08:31:13 - 00:08:40:07
Bennett Tomlin
Well, and people didn't like that. you could get their token by taxing people's wallets. People were put off by that.
00:08:40:07 - 00:08:56:15
Cas Piancey
Right. So since then, they've kind of, I don't know, they haven't been I'd say that they just haven't gotten grilled as much by the industry. I don't know if that's just because I'm in my own little bubble and I'm not paying enough attention, but, it seems like they've kind of just,
00:08:56:15 - 00:09:04:00
Bennett Tomlin
I think it's because crypto Twitter has an attention span of about 48 hours on the long end. And so they forgot.
00:09:04:00 - 00:09:41:02
Cas Piancey
Yeah. Fair enough. but so basically this, intelligence agent, like, intelligence company, offered a bounty to prove who the wallets that started this token belong to. which Zach XRP, who we were just talking about immediately said, oh, okay, I'll apply for that. I have on chain data and I have screenshots, where Martin is talking to, like, Andrew Tate and Martin is talking to these other influencers and KOLs and saying like, oh, you got to get in on this.
00:09:41:02 - 00:09:44:00
Cas Piancey
I just started this coin. It's officially the Trump token.
00:09:44:00 - 00:09:57:14
Cas Piancey
he applied for that. As soon as Zach applied for that, Martin kind of freaked out, reached out to Zach, said, you know, please, you don't need to share this, but I'm, you know, I'm the one involved, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he did a spaces and admitted that he was involved.
00:09:57:16 - 00:10:10:11
Cas Piancey
finally, after a couple days of trying to pretend that he wasn't the one behind it. but anyway, so the story goes now here we are. And for what it's worth, Zach did get the bounty. You got $150,000 from Arkham Intelligence.
00:10:10:11 - 00:10:30:12
Cas Piancey
Martin tried to get it afterwards. Really wanted that 150, 50 K. But basically the reason this became such a big deal was because, Shkreli tried to make bets with everybody about, the legitimacy of this coin.
00:10:30:14 - 00:10:57:04
Cas Piancey
he tried to bet somebody who goes by the handle gigantic rebirthed GCR, as he's known, on Twitter, and he, he offered to bet Martin Shkreli $100 million that Donald Trump was not involved. However, Martin said that the terms of the agreement were actually whether or not any Trump family member was involved. Regardless, the bet never happened.
00:10:57:04 - 00:11:23:16
Cas Piancey
Nobody's winning or losing any money. and ultimately, Barron Trump has not come forward and said anything about this coin. Donald Trump hasn't said anything about this coin. The Trump campaign has, said they're definitely not involved. They say they have nothing to do with it. you know, Melania, like anyone who a Donald Trump junior, Eric Trump, none of these people are talking about it.
00:11:23:18 - 00:11:44:05
Cas Piancey
Martin Shkreli name dropped a bunch of other influencers as well. He said he worked with ansem on this coin. ansem is a big Solana influencer who's been onboarding a bunch of kind of D-list celebrities lately. including, I think he reached out to Soulja Boy, Rich the kid, Iggy
00:11:44:07 - 00:11:48:02
Bennett Tomlin
That's what Soulja Boy needs. Another SEC settlement.
00:11:48:09 - 00:11:52:00
Cas Piancey
I almost I feel like the SEC should just hire him
00:11:52:02 - 00:12:05:03
Bennett Tomlin
I feel like the SEC just needs to start, like. Like his. They take his phone for the second time, and they double it, and they take his phone for the third time, and they triple it. And his fines should be like on an exponential curve at this point.
00:12:05:03 - 00:12:16:15
Cas Piancey
Well, that's why I'm saying hire the guy. Say, say, listen, Soulja Boy, just whatever you want to invest in, just go for it, dude. And basically, he would just lead them to every single scam there
00:12:16:15 - 00:12:25:17
Bennett Tomlin
Can we see your weekly portfolio, Soulja. Oh, well, unfortunately, all those firms got target letters this week.
00:12:25:17 - 00:12:49:17
Cas Piancey
so I think we've almost covered all of this. there's, it's it's still up in the air about like, how much the Trump family is going to actually claim that they're a part of this. I it does seem like Barron Trump was involved. Yeah. Zero. That's what I'm thinking too. and Martin Shkreli states that Barron Trump has the private keys so that nothing can like
00:12:49:17 - 00:12:53:19
Cas Piancey
if anything does happen to it, it's at the hands of Barron Trump, apparently.
00:12:53:19 - 00:13:15:13
Cas Piancey
And no one, no one else can do anything. So for now, the coin is essentially dead, right? Like this. There's they even if they wanted to add some sort of use case, which you can't do, because as soon as you start adding use cases, it becomes a security and it's unregistered and there's all these other issues. So, like, I don't know what the plan was for this coin ever to begin with.
00:13:15:15 - 00:13:19:06
Cas Piancey
but it certainly seems like for now, it's dead in the water.
00:13:19:06 - 00:13:23:11
Bennett Tomlin
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the people involved are not the best planners.
00:13:23:11 - 00:13:39:15
Bennett Tomlin
And of the people involved. serious thinkers who are like, how can we do this in a way that's definitely legal, definitely compliant, and definitely won't blow up into a messy piece of shit that sends at least one of us back to jail.
00:13:39:20 - 00:14:16:12
Cas Piancey
numerous times, Martin Shkreli stated that he, in in space, in the spaces that he was doing, he numerous times stated that he had told a 17 year old in an 18 year old that if their lawyers tell them not to do it, mention the ripple. ask them what statutes and ask them, like, ask them all these questions about, like why they're not allowed to do this or why these lawyers think they should not be allowed to do it, more or less giving them financial and legal advice and saying like, ask this, do this, don't listen to them.
00:14:16:12 - 00:14:34:21
Cas Piancey
They're not trying to give you money or make you money or do the right thing. They just want to make money from you by being your lawyer. Okay? I mean, it's pretty wild to give people that young financial and legal advice, but to each their own. And if their guardians were fine with it, I have nothing I can possibly say about it.
00:14:34:23 - 00:15:01:11
Bennett Tomlin
Also. So I need to go back to the supposed genesis of this token, which is that Martin claims Barron decided he wanted to launch a token to get out in front of his brother, who wanted to launch a token, and, like neither of them, should be launching a token. They're both asking for, like, immediate investigations and problems from doing that.
00:15:01:13 - 00:15:33:08
Bennett Tomlin
Any connection to their father is going to make those investigations that much worse and that much more likely to be successful. And so, like the idea that Donald Trump junior was planning a token. And so Barron decided to get ahead of it first by launching a token using his father's initials with a convicted financial felon is if true, an example of why we should perhaps have greater limits on what financial decisions 18 year olds are allowed to make, because that's not sensible.
00:15:33:08 - 00:15:50:00
Cas Piancey
Shkreli constantly in these spaces talks about how when he was 17 and 18 years old, he was trading hundreds of millions of dollars worth of biotech stocks and was working with Jim Cramer and Drew. And he's like, look how I turned out. And I just go like, do you not see the irony in saying, look how you turned out.
00:15:50:01 - 00:15:54:18
Cas Piancey
Do you not see that you spent seven years behind bars or whatever? It was
00:15:54:23 - 00:15:56:18
Bennett Tomlin
So far.
00:15:56:18 - 00:16:13:04
Cas Piancey
So far. Well, okay. So in that brings I think that brings us to our final point being, this, really well written, the block article, and this was by, Daniel, Kuhn, who has just switched. He used to work for CoinDesk.
00:16:13:06 - 00:16:33:22
Cas Piancey
and he's working for the block now. I enjoy a lot of his pieces. and he wrote about all of this, and he asked a lawyer, Austin Campbell, about if there could possibly be legal consequences for all of this stuff. And basically, Campbell said, you know,
00:16:34:04 - 00:16:35:14
Bennett Tomlin
Yes.
00:16:35:14 - 00:16:46:10
Cas Piancey
So definitely could be. Now, I it's fair to say that if Martin Shkreli has not misrepresented anything and
00:16:46:10 - 00:16:53:19
Cas Piancey
like, and there's no way that this coin is a security, which I think isn't for sure yet.
00:16:53:19 - 00:17:20:02
Cas Piancey
People, I don't think that's actually been decided. Decided as much as Shkreli pretends it is. Plus Shkreli has he's on supervised release. So under the terms of this supervised release, there's a lot of things he has to do that he, like, for instance, to work with minors. He has to get written permission and turn it into his POA or whatever it's called.
00:17:20:04 - 00:17:32:05
Cas Piancey
so there's a lot of possibilities here that he could very well be in trouble up plus FEC violations. It's not just the SEC, which is the Securities Exchange Commission.
00:17:32:05 - 00:17:38:10
Bennett Tomlin
No one gets in trouble for FEC violations. That's. That's smaller fry than SEC violations.
00:17:38:10 - 00:18:02:12
Cas Piancey
Talk to Ryan Salame about about not getting in trouble for these FEC violations. regardless, I do think there's a lot of things that could go haywire here for, for Mr. Shkreli. I also think it's really odd that I don't know why people maybe it is because it's the Trump family, but I don't know why anyone would look up to, Martin Shkreli after what he what he did.
00:18:02:12 - 00:18:08:12
Cas Piancey
He claims it's all law fair, that he,
00:18:08:14 - 00:18:13:05
Cas Piancey
Yeah, that he didn't deserve to do any time that he was innocent of those charges. Really.
00:18:13:11 - 00:18:14:17
Bennett Tomlin
Okay. Mike. Milken.
00:18:14:17 - 00:18:25:04
Cas Piancey
he was. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that he he's he's just being as greedy as everybody else. It's a pretty classic like case of what about ism where it's like, well, I didn't just because I'm, I'm doing this illegal thing.
00:18:25:04 - 00:18:29:17
Cas Piancey
So is everyone else. Why aren't they getting tried for it? which is just
00:18:30:01 - 00:18:35:17
Bennett Tomlin
I guess they're smarter than you. I guess they're 5% smarter than you and didn't get caught. Sucks to be you.
00:18:35:17 - 00:19:02:10
Cas Piancey
I don't know if smart or manipulative or conscious of social cues or I'm not sure what it what it would be, but there's something different, that's for sure. And I do think that everybody tends to agree that this has been a pretty slimy affair, regardless of the legality of it. Like the idea of creating this coin for someone who is so young.
00:19:02:10 - 00:19:10:07
Cas Piancey
And also it's clear that Martin Shkreli knows.
00:19:10:09 - 00:19:25:19
Cas Piancey
That this could affect Donald Trump, that this could affect the Trump family, this could affect a campaign. This could affect like, depending on how the coin even goes, could affect Baron's future. I just think it's really slimy, that's all.
00:19:25:19 - 00:19:47:01
Bennett Tomlin
Martin loves attention, and I think he saw an opportunity. Whatever was going on in the background here, he saw an opportunity to briefly get a lot of attention. And whatever part of his brain is still functional. Hoped that there'd be some way to take that attention and turn it into value for himself. But initially, I think he just saw a chance to get attention.
00:19:47:01 - 00:19:53:13
Cas Piancey
I think that's going to do it. hopefully there's not a lot of updates on this. I think it's pretty much played out the way everyone expected it to.
00:19:53:15 - 00:19:55:10
Bennett Tomlin
It's not going to affect CasCoin right?
00:19:55:10 - 00:20:06:10
Cas Piancey
well, it can't affect cast coin. I do want to say that obviously Ronald Reagan did endorse cast coin. I can't it was in private chats, and I don't want to leak any of those chats yet.
00:20:06:10 - 00:20:20:12
Cas Piancey
I really don't want to do that to Ronald Reagan. I know that he hasn't denied the claims, but he also hasn't said like, of course I endorse it out loud. but you got to trust me on this. Ronald Reagan, huge cast coin supporter. If you believe in Reaganomics, then you should trust Carson.
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