Zero Knowledge Proof

(Any views expressed here are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)

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Now, back to regular programming.

Over the past century, the skills a politician must possess to enthrall the people have changed alongside advancements in communications technology. To illustrate my point, I want to quickly traverse US presidential history with an eye on key communication technology advancements.

Radio:

The hottest tech stock of the 1920s was RCA, the predominant consumer radio manufacturer at the time. RCA’s all-time high Price/Earning’s ratio was 73 before crashing, never to recover its past glory. That’s something to remember about tech stocks … this time is never different. Radio came into its own as a military technology during WW1, and post-war, it became commercialized with the US leading the way. By 1940, almost 80% of US households possessed a radio. Wartime president Franklin Delnor Roosevelt became famous for his fireside radio chats, where he conversed with the American public and spoon-fed them the pro-war propaganda needed at the time to unite society to sacrifice blood and treasure to fight the Germans and Japanese. To be successful, subsequent politicians had to command a presence on the radio airwaves.

Television:

The boob tube became a consumer staple in 1960s America, as 90% of households owned one. For the first time, the whole nation could watch together the propaganda fed by the ruling class. The political watershed moment of television as a potent political advertising tool was the September 1960 presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Nixon was the favorite to win the race as he was the more seasoned politician. People knew his voice but not his face. Kennedy was the suave, inexperienced young buck. The televised debate, however, showed the American people a Nixon who appeared old and tired and a Kennedy who was young and virile. Nixon’s poor televised performance turned the tide, and Kennedy won the race. From then on, poised televised appearances became necessary to win high office.

Internet / Social Media:

It took politicians a while to truly harness social media, which grew out of the personal computer and internet revolution. Still, by 2016, such a force of political nature emerged. To put into context the amount of political television and radio ads purchased during a presidential election year, feast on this statistic: Roughly $2.6 billion was spent on television and radio ads in the 2012 US Presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

The rise of Donald Trump started almost as a joke. He entered a large field of Republican party contenders for the party’s 2016 US Presidential nomination. No one thought he could do it, and Trump wasn’t about to spend a serious amount of his own money on television and radio advertising to receive a political ass-whooping. He was considered a nuisance within the party and, as such, would not receive a large amount of donations from the usual suspects. However, while Trump lacked a massive campaign finance war chest to spend lavishly on television and radio advertising, he did understand how new technology was changing the media landscape.

Pew Media estimates that 68% of adults had a Facebook account in 2016. Back then, micro-targeting groups based on activities within the social network for political gain was not commonplace. Team Trump seized on this goldmine, cheaply targeted likely supporters, and fed them political ads at a much cheaper cost than they could via television or radio. In addition, Trump took to Twitter (now called X) to communicate directly to the people in real time. It was raw, uncensored, and chaotic. But it was human, and it made supporters and detractors pay attention. Attention is always the commodity at play, and Trump, using social media, amassed more attention than any other politician at a fraction of the cost and won the Presidency.

Podcasting:

Politicians globally saw how successful social media was at swaying opinions and changed their communication tactics. The full effect of social media disseminated political propaganda was on display during the Flu-19 pandemic. Governments globally demanded big tech social media platforms spread lies produced by approved journalists to the world about COVID and the vaccines and suppress anyone whose opinion differed from the official narrative. The cancelled and de-platformed took off to privately hosted podcasts that lived and breathed on the internet.

By 2024, many folks got their news and formed their political opinions based on listening to their favorite podcast host. Joe Rogan is by far the most successful podcaster in the US. He recently signed a multi-year $250 million contract with Spotify. Rogan shaped popular opinion during this past US presidential election, especially amongst undecided voters. Trump appeared on Rogan, but Harris did not. Trump appeared on numerous podcasts that appealed to his base. Harris stayed with the tried-and-true television and radio appearances supplemented by tired ads on social media platforms. Trump beat the shit out of Harris because he once again harnessed an evolution in communication technology that connected him more directly to voters.

What have we learned?

As technology allows information to spread faster and cheaper to a larger audience, politicians are connected more directly to those they govern. As rulers become increasingly humanized, they must adapt to the ways in which they communicate their platform to the people. Humanization is not always beneficial to politicians as the public quickly recognizes they are just as retarded as the next geeza.

$TRUMP

Trump is the first politician and arguably one of the top three most globally powerful politicians (Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, being his equals or close to it) ever officially to launch his own memecoin. Trump has ushered in a new era of political memecoins.

I argue that political memecoins will do the following:

- Offer a true real-time global opinion poll on politicians

- Allow political campaigns to increase engagement and reach at almost no cost

- Onboard billions of people into Web3

Let’s dig in.

Common Knowledge Game

Political popularity is a common knowledge game. What everyone else believes everyone else believes informs our opinion of a politician more than what we alone believe. This leads to an information asymmetry as in public we believe one thing and in private another. Therefore, we feed pollsters rubbish about our genuine opinions. This puts politicians in a bind because they want to know our genuine private opinions in real time. However, it also allows unpopular politicians to feign popularity if it is socially acceptable to support them publicly. In short, both the government and the governed have imperfect information and it leads to policy missteps.

Political memecoins offer zero-knowledge proof of political popularity. Specifically, as an individual, you can now privately support a politician by purchasing their memecoin, who your friends abhor, and face no social stigma. Thus, a politician gains information on the genuine opinion of the people. And finally, those who only want to go with the flow can support a politician because their memecoin’s price is up only, it allows them to be confident that they are supporting the side that everyone knows everyone else knows is going to win.

The rise of Polymarket, an exchange that allows bets on political outcomes using crypto, illustrates this phenomenon. Polymarket rose to fame due to its Trump vs Harris 2024 election prediction market, which showed, in real-time, who the global community thought was more likely to become the next US President. Anyone with an internet connection and crypto could bet on the outcome, allowing participants from around the globe to speculate.

Polymarket came under attack in the US because their markets showed Harris, the Democrat candidate and establishment favorite, losing. The Democrats were trying to hoodwink the public that Joe Biden wasn’t a demented vegetable and Harris was well-liked. Neither were true, but the mainstream media kept up the ruse until Biden self-destructed in a debate with Trump, and Harris lost the election. But while the establishment media and big tech platforms lied to the public, Polymarket clearly showed Trump was the favorite to win. The establishment was so enraged that the public had a true barometer on the election that the Polymarket CEO was swatted.

In other parts of the world, the powers at be preemptively banned Polymarket lest the unfiltered, genuine public opinion be expressed in real-time. France banned Polymarket. Why would France care about a political prediction market in a non-election year? President Macron is very unpopular, but he won’t allow new elections before it is necessary in 2027. It would not be great for him and his political allies if there was a live ticking market showing Marine Le Pen as the favorite to win the 2027 French election. That could hasten the fall of his globalist order in France. Therefore, Polymarket had to go.

If the goal is a popularity metric that is globally accessible, easy to understand, and impossible to ban, a political memecoin traded on a decentralized exchange (DEX) is the perfect instrument.

Let’s evaluate political memecoins on the three attributes needed to create a global market for political popularity:

Globally Accessible:

A memecoin is merely a unique public address that issues a pre-defined number of tokens that live on a public blockchain. There exist DEXs, which themselves are just pieces of code executed on top of a public blockchain where you can trade these tokens. The most popular trading pairs are [memecoin / Ethena USDe]. Therefore, anyone with an internet-connected device can trade a political memecoin.

Easy to Understand:

Do you like this politician and want to show your support?

Do you believe that other people like this politician or will like this politician in the future?

These are the only two questions you have to answer before you decide to buy a political memecoin.

People buy $TRUMP because they want to become a member of a group of Trump supporters or they believe Trump’s popularity will increase in the future.

That’s it. There are no fancy economic or financial theories to know. You don’t need to understand algebra, basic calculus, statistics, or probability theory. You just have to think and feel like a red-blooded human. Therefore, anyone can understand what gives a political memecoin value.

Impossible to Ban:

Memecoins ride on public blockchains, which themselves exist due to miners or validators running a particular piece of software. At a high level, to destroy a public blockchain, you need to remove all the miners/validators and then shut off the internet.

At the current scale and penetration of public blockchains, it would be impossible to remove all the miners/validators. It’s like playing whack-a-mole. As quickly as operators are removed from the network, the profit motive will entice others to enter.

Since modern society relies on internet-connected devices, the government cannot shut off the internet and survive as a governing body in its current form.

Therefore, while governments can talk tough about the negative aspects of memecoins from their perspective and selectively prosecute individuals and companies who offer or engage in their trading, they can never eradicate them en masse. Trying to do so would just make memecoin trading even more popular.

What do political memecoins tell us about politicians?

A memecoin is the purest and most honest popularity metric because participants vote with their wallets. When people speak to pollsters or their friends, they often lie about their true political opinions for fear of going against the crowd. Memecoin trading is zero-knowledge proof of political popularity, no one knows who owns or trades what unless a trader doxxes themselves. Given that real digital money is on the line, there is no point buying $TRUMP if you hate Trump or think he won’t rise in popularity. If that’s what you believe, you won’t buy it at all or will go short a $TRUMP/USDe perpetual swap. This is why the price direction of $TRUMP indicates his true global popularity.

Belonging and greed are the two most powerful motivating factors in memecoin trading. Therefore, I believe we can infer specific things about a politician when looking at their memecoin’s chart. If the memecoin’s price is rising, it means people are happy with current and expected policies and unhappy if it is falling. As political memecoin trading proliferates, we will be able to identify shifts in popularity based on discrete policy outcomes directly. A bill passed, a war fought, a speech given, etc., will immediately impact citizens, which will be observable by looking at the post-event price performance of a specific political memecoin.

Most politicians only want the public to know when everyone else likes them, not when everyone else despises them. Therefore, why would they launch their own memecoin? I believe it will become a political necessity in supposed democratic countries for any politician to endorse their own memecoin officially. To understand why, let's discuss how elections are won.

Political Memecoins as a Campaign Tool

To win an election, a politician must get people out to vote. It’s very difficult to do that because voters have so many other things to do with their time. But if said politician has a memecoin, and you bought it, it’s in your best interest to vote so that it retains value. Therefore, memecoins are the best political engagement tool ever. They directly connect financial gain to support at the ballot box for every single voter, not just the large campaign donors.

If only the challenger has endorsed a political memecoin in a particular race, they have the upper hand. That is because they can offer a direct financial benefit to going out and voting without paying for it. Memecoins are the most effective form of political advertising because they work as a viral digital word-of-mouth campaign. Trump, in one master stroke, just enacted campaign finance reform, and I don’t think he even knows it.

To activate their base, the challenger will participate in online events that cost nothing to produce. Trump won the 2024 election due to his willingness to appear on Podcasts like Joe Rogan. The next major election cycle will be won and lost on X-spaces or on Discord channels. The politician's goal is to discuss their political platform and increase the number of memecoin holders. Using the internet and social media, one-to-many conversations are free; building the community is difficult and time-consuming. However, building a community of rabid supporters is much easier when everyone stands to benefit financially from political success. This is way more effective than radio, television, or internet ads.

Many “old school” politicians will not believe me. In America, at least, the 2026 elections will feature a raft of new personal political brands created via memecoins, and they will defeat supposedly unbeatable incumbents. What if Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, and Maxine Waters all fell to an upstart from within their own party because of political memecoins?

While we will have to wait a few years for the political memecoin earthquake to shake loose change in the Pax Americana, their effects might be quickly felt in Europe. Germany is due for new elections next week. The establishment is trying its best to prevent AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) from gaining power. What if AfD created a raft of political memecoins for each of the MdBs running for election? And what if they became the largest political party in Germany with support so large that no government could be formed without their participation?

I know there isn’t much time, but creating a political memecoin takes less time than getting denied entry to Berghain.

What if, in the UK, Keir Starmer was forced to call new elections because of a revamped conservative movement that didn’t want young girls getting groomed by creepy old men? Could Reform UK launch a portfolio of political memecoins endorsed by their prospective MPs to retake the British parliament? I don’t know, but memecoins are the most viral way to communicate the wisdom of the crowd, and Trump just opened Pandora's box.

A Campaign Finance Thought Experiment

For any readers with new ideas and a desire to serve but empty pockets, this article may serve as a blueprint for funding your budding political careers.

Let’s have fun with this. Imagine that bankrupted Infowars host Alex Jones wishes to run for the open New York State US Senate seat in 2026 against the formidable incumbent, Chuck Schumer. Alex obviously has no money and no credibility with large corporate donors. While people might agree with some of his viewpoints, no one wants to stick their neck out for a loser in broad daylight.

Alex decides to fund his campaign by launching the $JONES memecoin. At launch, only 10% of the supply is circulating, and 90% is held by Alex’s campaign organization with no lock up. Seasoned memecoin traders might cry “RUG PULL” due to the large number of unlocked tokens held by the campaign. However, the campaign needs to raise money by selling tokens.

Anyone who buys $JONES implicitly understands that they are the campaign's exit liquidity. The campaign must raise funds by selling memecoins, so by purchasing $JONES at a higher price, the buyer is, in effect, making a donation to Alex’s campaign. However, there is a possibility that Alex wins, and $JONES surges in price.

Holders of $JONES are incentivized to tell everyone they can about Alex's political platform and how it will benefit the district. This brings more buyers, which allows the campaign to raise more funds by selling memecoins, which increases the chances of Alex winning, which increases the price of $JONES, and the cycle repeats. Also, schadenfreude might motivate many buyers to purchase $JONES to stick it to the establishment, as it would be hilarious to see Schumer lose to Alex Jones.

This is how a Web3-savvy political disrupter funds a campaign and creates a viral marketing machine.

Before opining on how Maelstrom will profit from a political memecoin future, I want to address some of the negative sentiment surrounding this new asset class.

Haters

Listening to all the crypto folks who poo-poo political memecoins is quite tickling. I will step through some of the major complaints and why I disagree.

Politicians shouldn’t profit from their office.

The easiest way to remove this as a concern is for 100% of the tokens to be distributed at launch. Then, if the politician wants to believe in themselves, they enter the market at the same prices as everyone else. They will profit personally if they rise in popularity, but I prefer this to accepting bribes and pseudo bribes from wealthy corporations and individuals behind closed doors. If a politician can make more money more transparently by just holding their memecoin, then they will do right by the people and not right by the wealthy because popularity becomes extremely profitable.

$TRUMP looks like a grift because his family and close associates hold 80% of the supply. However, I don't believe it. The tokenomics are known by all. If you choose to buy it, you buy it with eyes wide open. This is much better than how the Bidens feathered their nest through a raft of secret payoffs from foreign businesses to this or that super-duper secret corporate entity. Well, they would have been super-duper secret if the bag man wasn’t a crackhead.

When $TRUMP dumps, it will destroy retail crypto holders and set the industry back many years.

Memecoin volatility is a feature, not a bug. Crypto is a free market, and stocks are manipulated by central banks, commercial banks, and governments. Everyone knows this and knows the game is rigged. Remember GameStop, anyone? Crypto, for good or for bad, is a globally competitive free market with no ruling institutions. If the people can now express their opinion of politicians via financial markets, that is progress. If a politician rugs their followers, they will be voted out of office.

Trump should focus on enacting pro-crypto regulation and not a memecoin.

I believe Trump inadvertently handed the people a new weapon against political corruption. This is why the establishment media is trying to throw shade on the phenomenon. They recognize the election advertising and campaign finance gravy trade will screech to a halt. They also recognize that the political movements that are not allowed to win can now alter common knowledge by showcasing an up-and-to-the-right political memecoin price.

Memecoins, especially political ones, are useless; the industry should get back to building “real” tech.

Anyone who says that has a bunch of zombie cryptos in their portfolio. Or they are a founder of a project whose token price is down only. They see the enthusiasm of the people expressing themselves via trading pieces of culture and tut-tut that they don't do something “useful” with their money. They only believe it’s “useful” if the plebe’s money goes into their pockets. Go fuck yourself and your shitcoin.

Political Memecoins as an Asset Class

There are a few ways Maelstrom will profit from this movement.

Layer-1 (L1) Blockchains

An L1 blockchain benefits from memecoin trading, as every transaction must pay gas in their native token. Obviously, Solana is the chain where most memecoins are traded and where $TRUMP was launched. However, according to the Moonshot stats, 50% of wallets that held $TRUMP were new to Solana, and almost none stuck around. Therefore, Solana won’t necessarily be the chain where the majority of political memecoins trade.

Y’all know what I’m ‘bout to say. Remember, Maelstrom doesn’t fuck for free. We believe that Aptos has a shot at cornering this market. It comes down to speed and cost. Aptos has the fastest block times of any L1 and the cheapest transaction fees. The way Aptos can win this market is by integrating seamlessly with Web2 platforms that possess the users. Aptos was born out of Facebook, a Web2 juggernaut, and the team has the chops to execute such partnerships. Stay tuned!

Spot.dog

Jupiter and Raydium are two of the most popular places to trade memecoins on-chain. Their tokens have performed very well and volumes will continue to increase. However, the user experience is geared more towards crypto natives. For those who just want to ape into the memecoin of a politician they like, Spot.dog (a Maelstrom portfolio company) offers a much better and easier memecoin trading user experience. With their large user base due to a tie-up with Stocktwits, we believe this will become the go-to place to trade memecoins for the normies.

Political Memecoin Derivatives

Options

Political memecoins create a need for options trading. That is because there will be discrete events like an election or a vote on a particular bill that will cause the popularity and price of a specific memecoin to change violently. Expressing a bullish or bearish view on the outcome is best done using an option where you have the right but not the obligation to buy (call) or sell (put) at a predetermined strike price. Platforms such as Derive (a Maelstrom portfolio company) are uniquely suited to pioneer these markets.

Onchain Exchange Traded Funds (ETF)

In the near future, when every politician globally endorses their own political memecoin, traders will want to trade a basket of memecoins affiliated with a particular political party. Imagine if you could trade US Democrats vs. Republicans popularity based on the constituent prices of all elected members of the House of Representatives. Or, in a parliamentary system, you could trade UK Labour vs Tory party. Maelstrom will definitely invest in a protocol that allows the easy creation, listing, trading, and redemption of these types of political memecoin ETFs.

Political Memecoins in Non-Democratic Countries

Will Xi Jinping, leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), launch his own political memecoin? No, not right now, but maybe later.

At some point, Xi will determine he needs to show the people that everyone knows that everyone knows he is popular. The best way to do that will be through a $XI memecoin. However, this is a double-edged sword. Once launched and endorsed, it cannot be undone. If it falls in price, Xi cannot ban it or distance himself from it because he will rug the holders, who are his supporters. If there is one thing about Chinese financial markets policy you need to know, it is this: ordinary Chinese people should not lose money quickly en masse because of fear of social unrest. The CCP does everything in its power to prevent that.

Other autocrats should take note. While it is great to bask in the glory of the people through an objective measure, there are drawbacks when invariably the price of the memecoin goes down due to something you did or said. Ultimately, every leader, whether democratically elected or not, will endorse their own political memecoin as the people will stop believing crooked pollsters and the propaganda mainstream media machine when it comes to political popularity. They will demand a political memecoin, and ultimately it will be given.

The Barometer

Narcissism is a necessary personality trait of a successful politician. They must possess extreme confidence in their unique ability to chart a better future for all and consistently tell everyone about how amazing they are. Therefore, I believe Trump checks the $TRUMP price as often as he checks the level of the S&P 500, which is to say all the fucking time.

$TRUMP is down roughly 80% from its high, and Bitcoin has not retaken $110,000 (the level it reached at the height of $TRUMP mania). I believe that if crypto sentiment is improving, $TRUMP will lead Bitcoin. If some policy that those in the political know believe will positively impact crypto, $TRUMP will surge well before the positive news is announced, and then Bitcoin will follow.

Given that the other main centers of fiat money printing are reacting to Trump’s macroeconomic and monetary policies, the US leads, and the rest of the world follows. Therefore, I have $TRUMP prominently featured on my crypto watchlist. If I see it surge or flop quickly, then I know something is afoot.

We have entered a new phase of crypto capital markets. Now, we will have a plethora of forward-leading instruments to trade on the politics that directly affect crypto's price trajectory. Let the games begin!

This concludes my tryptic essay series. The Good (Zero Knowledge Proof), The Bad (The Genie), and The Ugly.

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