Big Business: Trump off to Blazing Start - Trump Coin - AI Investments - Crypto Mainstream

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What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. It is Friday, January 24th, 2025.
It's our weekly business news of the week. Brian and Chris coming to you from Miami and Greenville, South Carolina.
What's up, Chris? I was trying to stay warm down here, brother. Warm? I know, I'm sitting thinking we're in like the southern part of the U.S.
and it's like 50. Dude, it was 17 degrees in Greenville, South Carolina on Wednesday.
You guys get a high of 30. We aren't used to that.
Look, I don't have a coat for that shit. Did you see it? Yeah, we did.
It snowed. They called for all the snow last week and then we got a nice half an inch yesterday afternoon.
It just got out of nowhere. I saw eight inches in Pensacola, Florida today.
Is that a record? Yeah, it is. It's crazy.
Global warming. Yeah, dude.
And somebody's going to see me as a DM. Oh, that's not how it works.
The fact that it's actually getting colder where it's not supposed to is a sign of global warming. I know.
Whatever. So, yeah.
The theory's out there. Whatever it is, it was cold here in South Carolina.
Still cold, man. I, you know, I'm starting to long for that spring and summer, but you know, I will say this.
Chris and I are stepping it up today. We're usually fairly casual.
I said, Chris, let's show what we're about today. I wore a button down, I don't think, on the show, maybe ever.
Chris is rocking black. I got white, ebony, and ivory.
Yes. Yin-yang.

I know.

Looking sharp.

Looking sharp.

Talking about the business.

Giving you the business.

I'm feeling like I need a new setup here.

Like a desk, a little more professional, you know?

I don't know.

We're still the business casual.

It'd be a good name for a podcast.

Maybe one of those walking desks would be perfect.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Here we are.

The Walk of the Year. Business Casual.
It'd be a good name for a podcast. Maybe one of those walking desks would be perfect.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Here we are, the walking desk studio. But I hope everyone's doing great.
We have Trump. We got inaugurated on Monday.
It's affected all the news because there's so much business stuff. I'll tell you what.
This guy's not messing around. More, I don't know, things enacted in four days than I think Biden got done in four years or at least, I don't know, four quarters.
So just flying around, flying around. Can't keep up with the headlines.
It's like AI this, crypto that. We got the Trump coin.
Seas fire in Gaza. It's like, lot of a lot of changes very quickly happening you know i know this is what it's supposed to look like uh you know earth feels like yeah peace on earth and and activity and hey and the american way forward you know unity forward gearing people together getting.
Now, and all the windows pan the old, just the rich getting richer. No, but you need all these people to make shit happen.
They make opportunities and jobs happen and all that. It does trickle down, folks.
Not saying that's the only way. I'm not always saying it's top down, but I'm saying top down does work when you need to get activity moving and you need all the politics and bullshit out of the way.
So, so far, I like what I'm seeing. You don't have to like everything, but lots of good stuff.
You know, I will say it is a fine line with the Trump coin. Like he's in office office.
And he, look, I love him for it and also raise my eyebrow to him, you know, like for the same thing. He's in the public eye.
He gets free press every day as a person, you know, removing the presidency from it that you and I and no one else gets because he's the president of the United States and he was voted in. But, you know, launching a business venture, the Trump coin, I don't know all the financials behind it, but I would assume it just goes, I think he owns 80% of it, him and Melania.
It does go, that's convenient, right? It's interesting because up until this point, we've had a lot of, you know, kind of celebrities and musicians and stuff, try to do their own coins and none of them really work or they're kind of, and again, to a degree, part of it's more of a community builder, like collect your card or something. Right.
Trump is like the king of merch, dude. And this is really just like another level of merch in a way, you know? Yeah.
Totally. Community in another way.
And honestly, I'm shocked it took this long. There's been some coins related to him, but not directly.
But does it give you heartburn at all that he launches? It's so beneficial to his personal bottom line. He launches it the day before he's inaugurated.

I don't have a problem with it personally.

Because as a crypto guy, I talked to some friends about this yesterday.

Because we all kind of had the same conversation.

Like, is this bad taste?

And a lot of people got turned off more when the Volania coin dropped,

the Barron coin, where they're like, all right, Trump's won.

But now you're kind of trying to just cash in on everyone.

Right.

However, as a whole, I'll tell you, my dad called me last night. Well, Trump launched a coin.
My dad doesn't know anything about crypto. So I'm happy with just the awareness it brought to crypto as a whole.
And that's where I think Trump is smart. I think there's more to this than just, I don't think Trump's just trying to make a quick buck.
Don't get me wrong. They made a lot of money, but I think there's more to this than just the meat coin.
I think this is a great marketing play to get a lot of people talking about crypto and looking into it. Yeah.
I look, I can, uh, if I'm going to wear the sleeve of kind of taking the bullshit out and talking all sides a little bit. Even if I, you know, my personal beliefs tend to slant one.

I can understand a little bit of a lot of raised eye a little.

I just think I do think it does open opportunity up for people to get into Bitcoin because you can ride the wave of whatever his coin does, too.

And so he may own it and it is benefiting him directly, but it is sort of serving the purpose of policy. It's a fine line.
And I wouldn't, you know, if someone came in to do a debate, I don't know how long I could fight them off on their side of having issue with this on some level. But I can also personally see the upside, you know, more universally like you.
And put it this way, I'd rather have him do this and have our Congress and our people in the Senate insider trading that are voting and creating laws just to benefit their portfolios. I think there's more foul play in that because Trump coin isn't related on government contracts or who gets this contract or where we're going to develop this, where those are the decisions made in the Congress and Senate on these committees, right? Where you're directly influencing based on your stock portfolio.
Whether Trump owns Trump coin or I own it. It's irrelevant kind of because it really is just a novelty in a way.
Right. I could see him saying, OK, now.
Yeah, but I mean, but if, you know, let's go down that road. Like I hear what you're saying, but like four, okay, he comes out four years.

His fam, let's just say it holds the value.

It says on paper. But I mean, but if, you know, let's go down that road.
Like I hear what you're saying, but like four, okay.

He comes out four years, his fam, let's just say it holds the value. It says on paper now it's like $50 billion.
Like we all know that'll probably go down or whatever. But when he comes out of office, his, and his family never comes, you know, serves office again.
And Donald Trump Jr. and his sons and his sons and his sons have legacy financial support from that coin launching because he was president and the popularity that it had, that's where the heartburn comes in for people, right? Yeah, but I would challenge people.
I mean, the man has been a billionaire prior. Like he's opened new hotels since he was

president and no one kind of said anything about that. You know what I mean? And that would require more nefarious activity as far as using your influence to get into certain countries, into contracts, whatever.
I think we can all just admit that he gets some leeways that very few before him ever have because of that fact.

And I'll say this, and I'm going to just, you know, we're an opinion, so whatever we've been doing with the types of people that are non-business people that are political creatures their entire lives and have no business experience,

would you rather there be a touch of reality and a businessman,

maybe using that influence to help others and himself?

Or would you rather keep doing what we do,

putting in lifelong politicians that make nothing happen,

that talk in circles, that never align people in business and in government. So which one would you rather have? And so- No transparency.
Yeah. They didn't do this in the dark, right? Yeah.
Most of it's happening behind the dark. Joe Biden is probably a billionaire himself or a hundred millionaire.
Right. And I don't know.

I don't have facts, but I'm just saying I'm not stupid and I'm cynical.

And, but, you know, but everything else that was claimed about his son and everything else has come out to be true.

So let's just go down that road.

I'd rather have my president make his money off of a coin, a meme coin, than doing backdoor handshake deals with China, right? Yeah. Giving advantages to our adversaries.
Yeah. So it is an interesting thing.
He's enacted his ability to leverage his name, image, and likeness while in president. It's like the equivalent of a college athlete, you college athlete in school that now gets to take advantage.

They're seemingly paid with scholarship to go to school, but we all know they're making

billions of dollars on their backs.

So now they can take advantage of

their name image and likeness while they're playing football.

This is just

Trump's NIL play.

It's like when he sold red ties and Macy's

under the Trump brand. It was like he's had

his name on anything you can ever imagine just to.

Oh, he's a great, I mean, one of the best marketers of all time.

Truly, truly.

Like talk about personal branding.

Oh, God.

I mean, MAGA, you know, take away all the freaking, you know,

tyranny bullshit and like all the, you know, white supremacy garbage of MAGA.

Right.

Like think of how much, what impact has MAGA had on the economy just on merchandise? Dude, a ton. That was something he never- How many Etsy sellers would be underwater right now if MAGA hadn't launched? And he gave people that ability.
He let people use his name and likeness to make money. Yeah.
I don't think he's chasing down people selling MAGA stuff. He also understands brand.
That's what, you know, letting it spread. Hey, all press is good press, right? Yeah, exactly.
So meme coins are out. Ethics concerns.
Very dangerous. The cap is 7.78 billion as of right now.
FYI. Is what? It's 7.78 billion right now is the market cap.
How's it doing, the coin itself? The coin right now is trading at $38.01. $38? Yeah.
What did it start at? Zero. I mean, but what was it like Monday? Put it this way.
Okay, the last... It's went up 1,140% in the last week.
Yes. So it went from, as far as I can see, $7 to 38.
But I think there's a part of the chart I can't see where it was probably like 0.01 cents, but it definitely ripped inauguration day, you know, obviously dipped out. Now it's kind of balancing out or between like the 35, $45 mark.

So,

but,

and I heard people talking,

is this going to crash?

So I made a good point.

If you look at Trump's stock,

right.

A lot of that stock is also built on his brand,

not necessarily assets.

So.

That's right.

And you say almost all business now is speculation,

you know, like speculative.

Yeah.

Pays be known.

And literally, literally, you know.

Yeah.

Trump's official quote.

My new official Trump meme is here.

It's time to celebrate everything we stand for winning.

Oh, it reminds me a little bit of Charlie Sheen.

Winning.

That is his thing.

I don't know if he won or not.

Where is that guy?

He must have stopped drinking.

Yeah, he must have stopped drinking in the crack.

Because he just isn't out there anymore.

That or his health is bad.

I'll be doing well.

I do too.

Kind of miss his antics.

I know.

So this is how the news works.

This is why I'm probably moving to like three days a week with the business news,

giving you the business.

The TikTok kind of came and went, the ban, since we last.

Like, we would have reported that TikTok is down,

but we're now able to report it back up. That's how the news cycles work.
We don't record every 18 hours when it was back up. So, yeah, it's like almost like, well, I'm scared to talk about a headline because like the news cycle so fast, you got to talk deeper than one article because the shit's happened.
Like, oh, okay, TikTok is down. Oh my God, Chris, what do you think about it? Well, now it's back up.
You barely got to attack reaction videos before it was back up again. Yeah.
Crying videos. And I still, what's funny is the Instagram algorithm will send you stuff that they think you're interested in.
Even if it's like a week or five days, you know, like it sends you old and new stuff. I'm getting the, you know, all the guys that respond to everything where they play a video or the news behind them.
I'm still getting the ones where, you know, they're talking about how TikTok's gone down. And like, I'm like, well, this is, this isn't age well.
No, it was quick. It was quick.
And now back up. I was worried about it because they had CapCut down to the editing app.
And that's like my bread and butter, baby. And I was like, oh yeah.
I can't have that CapCut good. I know.
I was kind of like, you know, I don't care about TikTok that much. You and I aren't really huge on TikTokiktok no and then when cap cut got pulled i was

like oh no i'm gonna have to learn a whole new software and that got brought up that launched again yesterday too i guess that's tied in with tiktok somehow yeah chinese owning all the stuff getting all your data chris all your you know you're cutting all those videos together What kind of videos are you cutting?

Damn.

The Chinese are watching.

They got that evidence on you.

My workout videos and my cooking promotion videos. They figured me out.
They know how to get to this guy. Yeah, they got to you.
But yeah, Trump gave him like a 60-day. There's talk about it getting bought.
I saw several people making plays and saw Kevin O'Leary, one of the guys, making a play. Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank.
Yep. Perplexity.
Can you play with the perplexity on your app, like the browser? No. I've tried to use it.
It's interesting, but it's not taken over Google for me yet. But supposedly they were suggesting a merge.
They've got a lot of backing. Bezos, a lot of other big guys.
But Kevin O'Leary reportedly offered $20 billion in cash for TikTok.

But the way billions

just get thrown around now is like millions

like 15, 20 years ago.

And you know,

people use those words a lot. That's a lot of damn money.

It's a lot of O's.

Yep.

I think they're going to end up having to sell this thing.

I think,

I don't think Trump's going to allow them to just status quo.

I mean,

I think he's given 60 more days and then he's going to do what Trump does.

And he's going to follow through and be like,

all right,

you're not.

Cause I think by dance was holding out that maybe this would just go away.

Let's be honest.

They don't want to sell it. We talked about it like probably seven months ago, you know? Yeah.
And I know offline we had talked about even like TikTok shop. Is that something you should be getting involved in? And even I kind of, a lot of guys I know in it were like, no, nothing's going to happen.
And I think people really have been just kind of, oh, out of sight, out of mind. And then boom,

that's a rug pulled out from under him.

Yeah. I think Biden's just thought, oh, Biden's not going to do what he says he's going to do.

And then Biden really have to, because it so conveniently, you know,

happens right when Trump comes in. So Trump goes, all right, you're on my watch now.

You got 60 days. So I think they'll end up selling, or at least partnering or doing something.

I don't think Trump's going to let it stay status quo. No, yeah.
And not only they should. I mean, nobody wants World War III and China and the U.S.
at odds, but they are an adversary on some level. It just is what it is.
And I'm not saying that the people are necessarily adversaries, but the governments definitely are. And the interests definitely don't align a lot at all.
So we'll see where that goes. So all you Tik TOK lovers just don't start posting on posting on Instagram.
Yeah. Move over to the adult platform.
I guess. I don't know.
I just, it's more just I'm vested there. I'm on TikTok.
I got the blue check. It's great.
Thank you. Like, but it's like, you know, I just don't have time or the energy.
You know, when the team gets a little, if I got one more person on the team,

they would, TikTok would probably be on the list of like more than what we do now.

Yeah.

But until then, you know, you guys can find us.

Yeah, definitely not going to spend a lot of energy

until we find out what's going on with this.

Bank of America says

the banking industry will embrace crypto. Congratulations.
Way to wise up, buddy. In the department of no shit.
Yeah. You got the president, all his people.
He's got a meme coin out, man. What are you going to do? Not support it? And I don't know.
The banks, I posted, we talked about it last week. I got a little side eye with the banks right now.
And I believe we mentioned last week that the banks would be announcing that they would become custodians for crypto. Yes, we did.
And here we are. They're realizing money's changing and they still want to get their clip.
Yeah, they want to get those record profits like they've been getting. Hey, they're devising plans as we speak in the how do we take it out of the customer's ass department is they're meeting right now.
What's the acronym for that? H-2-A-C-A. How to, you know, take more money out of America's pockets.
How many fees can we get on crypto? You know there's someone in the fees department concocting this right now. How many fees can we get on crypto and for what? Transaction fees.
Late trade fee. A Bitcoin risk awareness fee.
Yeah. I know what you're up to.
You dirty banks. FYI, folks.
You don't need a bank. you can use your own wallet yeah but at a certain point for business it's tough it's tough like to not have a u.s bank i'm not saying it's i'm not saying you can't a lot of people get away with it yeah i think for things for things like getting a mortgage, right? Right.
I still got to play that game. For now.
Yeah. But it's going to be interesting to see this.
It will be interesting. But I'm just glad that the industry is coming along here.
Always late to the game and early to the profits. Welcome to the party.
They're too busy counting their money from fourth quarter, those record profits. What else is on your mind this week? You know, we've got, it's just Disney.
Like I'm saying, it's dizzy, dizzying Trump's enactment. Like you got the AI task force.
You see this thing? So the big players on the stage coming out and basically 500 million

billion another b commitment here for these entities data centers this is a big i think

it's a bigger deal than it may be being made out to be like it i agree like to have this

on our it doesn't sound sexy yeah but have it on our soil which is what ultimately trump is up to here needs to be on our soil under our control not relying on others and it's not big because chris we can't help the free world and others if we're relying on others to help the broader world it's a a mouthful, but I think you know what I'm saying. It's like, so this stuff needs to be on our turf and under our control so that we can make sure it's used both for our interests and for our allies.
So I get it. I mean, everybody wants to talk about the cost.
And I get that too. We'll see where that goes with overall costs and certain things and tariffs and all that.
I hear you. But this is a big deal, especially with what's going on with AI and how important it's going to be, how it's going to dictate a lot of industry and things.
So, got $100 billion to start. We need to invest in America because outsourcing clearly doesn't work for us.
We've lost our power. Yeah, or lost a larger percentage than we should have.
Stargate Project. This is a very large investment in the future, an investment that affects all of humanity.
Trump touts joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle worth 500 billions. The three tech CEOs have joined and president Donald Trump's multi-billion dollar artificial Intelligent intelligent infrastructure project, defended the venture as an investment that impacts all of humanity.
President Trump unveiled a massive AI infrastructure project from the private sector on the first full day of his second term in office. Trump announced that SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle had joined, created Stargate to build data centers in the U.S.
for powering AI. I mean, that's what all it says, computing power.
Large data centers, lots of power, energy, and heat. You ever been in a data center or walked in a place where, like, all the computers are on, like, the back servers? It's hot.
How much fucking heat that shit puts out? It's crazy. You want to get close to the sun.
That's close to it. You got fans going everywhere.
What it takes to power these things. They think mining crypto takes a lot.
Damn. I was going to say I've been in those and those are loud and hot.
Crypto mining operations, a lot of energy. It's so funny, the modern mining.

Used to be down in the depths of a pit. Now we're

in a sweaty

matrix.

The stories

that come true.

The predictions that end up

real.

I just don't want to get plugged into

a matrix.

I want to wake up and be in like a big vat of nasty jelly, Nickelodeon plasma, whatever that shit is. I don't, I don't want my brain plugged into the data center.
It's fascinating. What's cooking the rest of the week? Weekend for you, Chris? Any big plans? I had a wedding this weekend.
There you go. Celebrating some love.
Old friends. Oh, nice.
Don't do it. Wedding crashers.
What a great. You going to crash it? You've taken a date or anything? No, I'm just going with all my old friends from like.
Single Chris got. Hey, anyone listening? Single Chris.
Hey, date to the wedding. You know, got Miami, Got a nice dog.
America's most eligible bachelor.