In a year that has pushed crypto to unprecedented heights of cultural and political prominence, this week brought some of the cycle’s most uncanny moments yet—thanks to Donald Trump. 

On Monday, just one day after the former president survived an apparent second assassination attempt, he hosted Rug Radio’s Farokh Sarmad, a prominent Crypto Twitter personality, to discuss digital assets policy at his Mar-a-Lago estate. (Disclaimer: Rug Radio is Decrypt’s sister company.)

Due to the wild timing, a crypto degen ended up conducting the first interview with Trump about the near-death incident and its implications. The timeline, of course, was loving it. 

Over the course of the interview, Trump tripled down on his position that the American crypto industry will be imperiled if he is not re-elected. He also credited his NFT trading card collections as being the catalyst that changed his once-skeptical view of the industry. 

Later that night, Trump’s sons and business partners unveiled further details about World Liberty Financial, their long-rumored decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, which will feature a native, non-transferable governance token. 

But that apparently wasn’t enough crypto talk for Trump, less than seven weeks out from the presidential election. On Wednesday, the Republican nominee stopped in at PubKey, the Bitcoin-themed bar in Manhattan. 

There, Trump became the first known American president to complete an on-chain transaction, purchasing several burgers with Bitcoin. But, despite ample planning, the transaction took some time to complete and didn’t go quite as smoothly as some may have hoped—a detail that did not go unmissed on Crypto Twitter. 

Meanwhile, across the world at the Solana Breakpoint conference in Singapore, Iggy Azalea added even more flash to the week by canceling an appearance at the event, and claiming she only did so because she was barred from twerking onstage. 

Azalea was set to debate the merits of celebrity meme coins, after launching her own earlier this year. Her would-be opponent, Taproots Wizards co-founder Eric Wall, soon after expressed dismay at the cancellation, arguing he had been “rugged of my glory and erection.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.