To sum up the previous two posts, Trump’s economic policy is a stew of way-past-their-sell-by-date ideas that will likely produce (this is what has invariably happened in the past) some combination of low growth, high inflation and rising interest rates in the US, with, most likely, a falling currency.
This would be sort of like the Trump University or Atlantic City casino debacles, only on steroids. And it would doubtless be sowing the seeds of a wicked bear market of the 1973-74 or 2007-08 variety, or worse.
Still, there are ways–like shorting, holding cash or precious metals or foreign stocks (Japan?) to deal with the fallout. All of these avenues have counterparty or political risk associated with them, however. In the US, for example,
–in 1933, President Roosevelt made it illegal for Americans to possess gold in the US and required that they turn their holdings in to the government
–in early 1929, noted speculator Jesse Livermore shorted the US stock market. As the subsequent collapse developed, he went to his broker to collect some of his gains, only to find that the firm had gone out of business.
–if we want to think darker thoughts, we know that Trump’s social policy is deeply anti-women and anti-immigrant. As a survivor of the Nazi holocaust in 1940s Europe commented to me at a recent event supporting holocaust awareness, the views of Trump and his aryanized religious right supporters sound to her an awful lot like those of the national socialists in the Germany of her youth.
This is where crypto comes in.
To me, cryptocurrencies are similar to chuk kam gold, in that both are stores of value outside the official banking system that’s easily portable and can be hidden from others. In the case of gold, as holdings scale up storage and transportation become significant issues. And moving gold in large amounts across national borders can be problematic.
In the case of crypto, cross-border movement isn’t an issue. Arguably, then, the more likely a Trump presidency becomes, and the more divorced from reality Trump himself appears, the better for cryptocurrencies.