It’s no coincidence that Bitcoin’s collapsing price has coincided with signs of President Donald Trump’s diminishing political power, according to Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize–winning economist and professor of economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Fresh off its all-time high of $126,000 last month, Bitcoin has been in free fall for the past month, sitting at about $87,000 as of Wednesday after falling to a six-month low of about $81,000 last week. Cryptocurrency’s broader $1 trillion selloff has even cost the Trump family—with its ample ventures in crypto—$1 billion of its fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
To Krugman, formerly an outspoken and longtime New York Times columnist, Bitcoin’s latest rout is an indication that Trump has lost his edge. Krugman notes that Trump has long been friendly to the crypto industry, in addition to having significant investments in the sector.
“How should we understand Bitcoin’s recent crash? Think of it as the unraveling of the Trump trade,” Krugman said in a Substack post on Monday. “Trump remains as determined as ever to reward the industry that made his family rich, and those around him are as determined as ever to make America safe for predators of all kinds.
