During Monday’s World Liberty Financial launch event hosted by Decrypt’s sister company Rug Radio, former U.S. President Donald Trump credited the excitement over his own branded NFT projects with his change of heart towards cryptocurrency.
As the Republican candidate for president explained, Trump observed that the majority of his NFT trading cards minted on the Ethereum scaling network Polygon were being purchased with cryptocurrency—and that his supporters were enthusiastic about his entry into the space.
“So many people paid this way,” Trump said. “If they would have been paying in dollars, I would have said that’s standard, I would have assumed—and I was blown away.”
Before the launch of his first NFT collection in December 2022, Trump acknowledged that he wasn’t interested in crypto. In fact, he had previously criticized Bitcoin during his first presidential term, stating he was “not a fan.” In 2021, after leaving the White House, he remarked in an interview that Bitcoin “just seems like a scam.”
However, that is no longer the case, and witnessing the use of crypto to purchase his NFTs seemingly contributed to his change of perspective. Since that initial project sold out in 2022, Trump has launched three additional sets of digital trading cards—the latest of which debuted in August.
“I did ask what percentage was taken between Bitcoin and all of the other things, but with crypto, and it was a massive majority,” he noted, expressing his surprise at the number of people willing to spend their crypto on his digital cards.
“I was a little surprised by that, and that was a while ago now—and it opened my eyes,” he said. “But I think my children opened my eyes more than anything else.”
Joining Trump in the live Twitter Space were his three sons, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump—the youngest, who Trump mentioned was a seasoned crypto user, even at just 18 years old.
“Barron knows so much about this, and he’s a young guy, but he knows,” Trump said. “[Barron] talks about his wallet, he’s got four wallets or something, he knows it so well.”
“It’s almost like younger people know it a lot better than older people,” Trump added. “But I have a lot of respect for them.”
Trump compared the crypto industry to a burgeoning yet substantial business, stating that it has the potential to “be something special.”
“When I do things, I notice a lot of crypto comes in; people pay with crypto,” Trump said. “You didn’t see that even a year ago, two years ago. So I think it’s really big, and yet it’s a fledgling compared to what it will be.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication with additional details