Kleptocracy Through Crypto: TRUMP as the Governance Token of the USA

Freight Technologies, a Texas-based logistics company, issues a convertible bond to raise $20 million, with which it will … no, not buy bitcoin … but rather TRUMP tokens! They have a reason for this—but probably not the one they claim.

With the purchase of Trump tokens, Freight, according to their press release, „will become the first publicly traded company to make $TRUMP the cornerstone of its digital asset strategy.“

The alleged reason is stated bluntly by CEO Javier Selgas: „At the heart of our mission is to foster productive and active trade between the US and Mexico […] We are convinced that the Trump tokens are an effective way to promote fair, balanced, and free trade between Mexico and the US.“

So the company is buying Trump tokens in order to get the US president’s attention. After all, Donald Trump recently announced that he would invite the top 220 holders of his memecoin to a dinner at the White House, with the top 25 investors getting a private audience. „Incredible,“ MSNBC called this move. People are already used to Trump using his presidency to line his own pockets, but the memecoin dinner is even brasher. Trump doesn’t even try to hide that he’s a kleptocrat. Even Cynthia Lummis, a Bitcoin enthusiast and loyal Trump-supporting senator, is starting to have doubts.

„Let me explicitly state what’s going on here,“ MSNBC writes. „Trump is auctioning off his presidency. The more someone buys his cryptocurrency, the greater their chances of meeting Trump.“

In other words: The TRUMP token is no longer just a memecoin, but rather a governance token—for the United States! And a company like Freight Logistic has no problem openly announcing in a press release that it is eager to play this dirty game.

I would like to say here that we are witnessing some kind of revolution in governance or governance tokens. It wouldn’t be a positive turn, but it would have some meaning, and Freight would be, even if negatively, a trendsetter that recognizes at an early stage what potential crypto holds.

Such an interpretation would seem plausible at first glance. After all, just a month ago Freight issued shares to buy $5.2 million worth of FET tokens, the governance tokens for arguably the most important AI coin, Fetch: “The FET tokens enable Freight to actively contribute to Fetch.ai’s decentralized AI ecosystem,” states the press release. The company aims to use AI agents to make supply chains more transparent and improve logistics.

Sounds interesting—if you set aside the moral concerns, right? Tokens would finally have a tangible use case by granting participation rights.

The problem is this: Freight is operating from as weak a position as a vineyard snail in the Chihuahua Desert. Just look at the company’s stock price. Over the last five years, it has plummeted by a staggering 99.95 percent, a drop that would be a remarkable loss even for the most miserable memecoin. Investing in Freight was a guaranteed way to destroy capital.

With a market capitalization of $3.28 million, Freight is not even a penny stock; with a cash flow of minus two million dollars and revenue of $470,000, it is more or less on the verge of bankruptcy. It is no longer a relevant player, but a walking corpse on the capital market.

Freight Logistics’ share price, via finance.yahoo.com

Even if Selgas were granted an exclusive audience with Trump and could get all his wishes granted to the letter, the company appears so run-down that it would hardly be able to capitalize on the opportunity. The purchase of Trump tokens is likely little more than a desperate attempt to lift the stock price somewhat and extract a few dollars from unsuspecting investors. We’ve seen this from other companies reinventing themselves as Bitcoin treasuries, but in Freight’s case, it comes off as downright grotesque.

Again, Freight’s price via Yahoo, this time the 5-day view.

Nonetheless, Freight has likely already achieved its goals. The share price rose from about one to three dollars and then fell back to $1.50. It’s still almost 50 percent up, but someone has cashed out big time. The TRUMP token isn’t just a scam from the White House—it also served as the foundation for a scam one level down.