good evening from New York I'm Chris Hayes Donald Trump is planning to stock his white house with more than a dozen billionaires and super rich people as axios puts it the president-elect has assembled an administration of unprecedented mindboggling wealth now let's be clear here right the US is a place where moneyed interests have had incredible leverage and influence for a very long time in fact it's been a huge gaping wound in American democracy but this is different and worse I think the worst it's ever been I mean Trump has brought in huge amounts of money
from a very small amount of people unprecedented in modern times including the richest man in the world Elon Musk who spent a quarter of a billion dollars helping to elect Trump and those Rich benefactors of all sorts of private interests and it's not crazy to imagine they are expecting something in return for musk and VI ramaswami it is the opportunity to slash government spending including this country's social safety net except presumably the billions of dollars in federal contracts that musk's companies get now when people talk about oligarchy in this country ruled by the wealthiest people
they're often using it in a kind of metaphorical sense very rich folks and corporations have a lot more political influence than the rest of us they manage the agenda on Capitol Hill but oligarchy under Donald Trump is starting to look much more literal the billionaires are being given direct access to the levers of state power do you think they're going to use that authority to benefit the American public or are they going to use it to benefit themselves to that end Donald Trump just announced he will be appointing venture capitalist and former PayPal exec David
saaks to his White House may not be familiar with Sachs he's very rich a right-wing South African born guy who's quite close with the other two very rich right-wing South African guys Peter teal and Elon Musk in fact back in the 90s saaks actually co-wrote a book with teal about how diversity is bad titled the diversity myth and saak has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump hosting a fundraiser for him at San Francisco Mansion last spring where some folks paid $300,000 per person Sachs is now going to be Donald Trump's Zar for crypto Andi
since Trump's election cryptocurrency Holdings have gone through the roof with the anticipation they will face a far more friendly regulatory environment under Trump in fact just yesterday the value of Bitcoin a Bitcoin a single one hit a $100,000 for the first time crypto interests were one of the biggest Spenders in this election cycle they dropped a ton of money for Trump and against cryptos skeptical Democrats including in primaries or in this senate election in Ohio where they dropped $40 million to out the Crypt skeptic Senator shered Brown of Ohio and to be clear I I
think crypto is interesting I know a lot of people who own crypto but there are also perfectly good reasons to be skeptical of cryptocurrency particularly as a a financial instrument integrated into the American Financial system not the least of being it's Absolut absolutely rif with scams fraud grift and disasters blowups just this week retail investors regular people got absolutely wiped out after investing in a failed cryptocurrency from a viral Tik Tock star so for very understandable reasons Democrats and Democratic Regulators have worked hard to keep crypto which has been supremely volatile blocked off from the
rest of financial system so that if it crashes it doesn't bring the entire US economy down with it requiring a bailout some rich people holding a lot of crypto disagree with that strategy they want a bailout implicit or explicit if the House of Cards comes crashing down to that end after Republicans took back the Senate with the help of money from the crypto industry they now have a plan to return the favor and I want you to listen to this part because no one's really talking about this but the the the elements of the plot
are just there in plain sight Senate Republicans are working on a bill that would transfer billions and billions of dollarss of money from the US government from taxpayers and hand it over to a handful of big crypto holders we got a present for president Donald Trump here it is this is the Bitcoin Reserve bill in the Senate of the United States to establish a Bitcoin strategic Reserve serve a network of Secure Storage vaults purchase program and other programs to ensure the transparent management of Bitcoin Holdings of the federal government yes the Bitcoin act from Republican
senator Cynthia Lumis of Wyoming it would establish a federal reserve of Bitcoin it's truly one of the most audacious schemes I've ever seen in Congress here's why Rich folks who own a lot of crypto have a problem right cryptocurrency Bitcoin in particular is a very valuable asset single Bitcoin worth over 100 Grand some very very wealthy people own hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars worth of bitcoin David Sachs for instance has a lot of crypto that said it's not a liquid asset like cash that you can easily spend or invest or use for
practical purposes it has no practical use really outside of a few gimmicks and it's very useful for criminal cartels so if you're an investor you're sitting on this speculative asset you can't do anything with it but it's worth a lot of money what's more if you try to sell it all off right to get rid of it the hordes of Bitcoin on the exchanges that's going to flood the market and tank the price so what's the solution they're going to sell it to the US government over five years the United States will assemble 1 million
Bitcoin 5% of the world Supply and it will be held for a minimum of of 20 years and can be used for one purpose reduce our debt reduce our debt you can't pay the debt down in Bitcoin are you tracking this are you tracking what's being planned and announced in person here right the US government handing billions of dollars into the pockets of Rich crypto holders the plan is that the Bitcoin Act would have the government sell off some of its gold reserves you know the stuff from Fort Knox and use the money to buy
a billion Bitcoin at current market value that would cost $100 billion now the actual price would likely be much higher because that market value would almost certainly rise as a result when a new buyer enters the market and boosts the price of the asset the buyer is now legally obligated to buy this is an enormous Heist they're just back in the truck up to the government in front of all of us a massive bailout to the crypto world the opportunity to turn a speculative asset into real cash on your dime and presumably David Sachs as
the cryptos are will help Usher that plan through and there is a real irony here for a long time as long as I've been covering crypto which is over a decade Advocates have sold cryptos this libertarian project right we don't need government we don't need Banks we don't need financial intermediaries we don't need Reg regulation here's Sachs himself making that point on a podcast two years ago there is a huge risk of currency debasement when the government is in control and particularly when you have the world's Reserve currency there's just such an enormous temptation to
print money to finance your budget and to rack up loans that become unpayable what Bitcoin offers is a different kind of currency where it's not backed by a government it's backed by math it's backed by encryp and so you don't have to trust the government all that lofty retoric goes right out the window though when Republicans decide they want the government to initiate a massive upward transfer wealth and bail out the crypto industry
