$Trump, TikTok, And Trea$urie$

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

$Trump, TikTok, and Trea$urie$

It isn’t often that I wake up and a T-Report has written itself, but this was one of those days. Since the main theme of this weekend’s report was going to be “we will learn a lot early this week,” it saved me from writing a dull report. We will have more updates to our views this week as we expect the headlines to come in fast and furious, but let’s just check out three things that occurred after the market closed on Friday.

Before anything else, here is the replay to Academy’s 2025 Geopolitical Outlook webinar.

$Trump

Apparently, and I can hardly believe that I’m writing this, there is an “official” Trump Meme Coin. The President-elect’s Twitter account tweeted out in support of the coin. The running “joke” on social media is that the coin is up more in 24 hours than the S&P 500 is since 1980! (current price) This site has the market cap at “only” $5 billion, but I think that is “only” based on circulating supply, not total potential supply (if that matters to anyone).

On Kalshi, the betting market has around a 70% chance that the U.S. creates a National Bitcoin Reserve this year. This is up from 40% just a week or so ago.

The only thing I know for certain is:

• I’m a bit nervous about providing these links, but they all seem legit.
• It is highly likely that the President-elect and some of his crypto folks are sitting on huge potential gains after this launch.

Things that we can now speculate about:

• Does this make support for a Bitcoin Reserve more likely? I think so. It seems like this group donated a lot and backed the right candidate(s) this time around and are being rewarded for it.
• Does this new meme coin have the potential for a “rug pull” like we’ve seen happen to some others? Would that tarnish those involved? Would it diminish interest from other politicians to support any crypto bills? Or will jealousy that they don’t have their own multibillion-dollar meme coin cause them to be unsupportive?
• Kalshi, as far as I can tell, didn’t even have bets on whether President-elect Trump would create his own meme coin, and they have bets (it seems) on just about everything else, so that tells us something. Kalshi and crypto insiders didn’t see this coming.

I’m honestly still trying to digest what I think about this, which is probably my way of saying this seems weird at best, but I am forcing myself to try to see the good in it.

What it does tell us is that “outside the box” might not do justice to just how far outside the box some potential policies might be.

TikTok

The Supreme Court upheld the bipartisan law requiring TikTok to sell its U.S. business to American buyers.

Rather than enforcing the rule and banning TikTok this Sunday, President Biden seems to be “deferring” (I think that’s the right word) this to the Trump administration. In many ways, that makes sense, since it would be awkward to ban it for a day, only for the new administration to unban it.

But, as you noticed, I highlighted Supreme Court and bipartisan in the first sentence. I’m not sure how much in D.C. has been truly bipartisan of late (I don’t think very much), but this was. The Supreme Court acted very quickly in support, which also seemed a bit out of character.

This is all happening as President-elect Trump has expressed some sort of interest in keeping TikTok going (both presidential candidates used the platform during their campaigns).

In the past weeks, we’ve been discussing TikTok as a “tell” for how tough, or not tough, Trump will be with China once he takes office. It came up during our Bloomberg TV interview (the 1:45 mark).

We’ve been wondering if once he takes over, and spends time with his National Security team, whether his view will change. Again, something triggered D.C. to set up this bipartisan law in the first place, which makes us wonder how easy or wise it is not to force the issue.

Is this a gift for the new president from the old president? Or is this leaving something that D.C. doesn’t like, but the nation seems to love, in the new president’s hands, which might prove troublesome?

Certainly, it will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially as there have been stories about Musk being the potential acquirer.

Trea$urie$

Apparently the Treasury Department will need to use “extraordinary measures” on January 21st to avoid hitting the debt ceiling.
That seems like big news, and anything but a gift to the new administration. I don’t remember hearing that we were that close (the day after President-elect Trump is sworn in) and it was certainly not mentioned during Yellen’s presentation in NYC on Wednesday that I had the pleasure of attending (with a front row seat). I wouldn’t play poker with her after that though. Lots of talk about how they did everything right, and basically the deficit is where it needed to be, but has to be fixed going forward. However, no mention of the imminent need to take “extraordinary measures.”

I listened to a lot of Scott Bessent’s hearings (I was driving on my way to the homeland, which as of now, is not yet the 51st state), and didn’t hear anything about how he would need to use extraordinary measures once he takes office. I honestly don’t know when he gets confirmed, but that was also because I didn’t think day one of the administration would coincide with the start of a dumpster fire.

One of my favorite “measures” is that the Treasury has the ability to give certain funds (the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, for example) IOUs for Treasuries rather than Treasuries. Since a Treasury bond is already to some extent an IOU, it seems both circular and bizarre, but it is part of the law of the land.

With this ability to issue “IOUs for Treasuries” rather than Treasuries, I presume there are many more loopholes that wouldn’t make sense to any market participant, but made sense to the lawmakers, so I’m not worried about the potential for a breach.
Having said that, some within the new administration might see breaching the ceiling and being forced to stop a variety of payments and activities as a step towards cutting the deficit. Seems like a crazy idea and would be well “outside the box,” but since we now have what is effectively a presidential meme coin, I’d be hesitant to say that anything is too far-fetched!

Clinging to Me$$y

We started the year by saying that things would be messy, not chaotic. I’m going to stick to that view for now (but the three things above seem at least a little messy, and the combination does start feeling a bit chaotic).

We will do our best to update our views as the new administration starts laying out policy and approving executive orders. For now, we still think that 10s push towards 5% (more convinced of that than ever after the barrage of headlines), and that you need to be small and nimble on risk (nibbling on down days, selling on strength).

In any case, Monday might be one of the most interesting days we’ve had (with markets closed) in quite some time. Good luck and here’s to hoping messy holds on, as chaos is not good at all!