MarketsTrump
|4 min ReadTrump Turns Wall Street Into A High Stakes Crypto Casino
Lucca Menezes
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
The United States is no longer just a financial hub. Under the new administration, it has become a giant betting floor. Trump calls himself the "Crypto President." He did not just stop the regulators from doing their jobs. He opened the floodgates for a wave of risky companies to dump digital assets onto the public stock market. Now the mess is starting to hit the fan. This shift has created a dangerous link between Bitcoin and your retirement account. The boundary between a stable investment and a wild gamble is gone.
The Digital Treasury Bubble Ready to Pop
The era of the "Digital Asset Treasury" or DAT has arrived. But it looks more like a house of cards. Over 250 public companies are now hoarding crypto instead of running real businesses. They take a failing toy maker or a recycling firm and flip it into a Bitcoin vault. They borrow billions of dollars to buy tokens they cannot afford. But when the market dips, these firms die. Anthony Scaramucci joined three of these firms recently. One of them lost 80% of its value in just a few weeks. This is not building a future for finance. It is just creating more exit liquidity for insiders.
The core of the problem is the simple lack of experience. Many of these companies are run by teams who have never managed a public firm. They rely on the "Trump pump" to keep their stock prices high. But the data shows a different story. These firms have already planned to borrow over $20 billion to keep buying tokens. This level of debt is a ticking time bomb for the 2026 market cycle. If Bitcoin does not stay at all-time highs, these companies will face a total value collapse that could wipe out thousands of retail investors.
The Leverage Trap Bleeds Into Traditional Finance
The real danger is the debt. Wall Street is addicted to leverage again. Investors are now holding over $200 billion in crypto futures contracts. Even big players like Coinbase are handing out 10x leverage to anyone with a phone. When Trump announced new tariffs on China in October, the market broke instantly. A massive $19 billion was wiped out in a single night of forced liquidations. This is the liquidity trap we warned about. If crypto crashes again, the damage will not stay in the trenches. It will bleed into the entire banking system.
We expect this volatility to trigger a major macro pivot by early 2026. The current administration is betting that innovation will solve every problem. But history shows that unregulated leverage always ends in a crash. Projects like Plume are trying to put stocks and oil wells on the blockchain. But if the base layer of this new system is built on bad debt and 10x leverage, the whole thing will fall. The street is currently ignoring the warning signs because the profits look good today. But the risks are moving from the fringe of the internet directly into the heart of the global economy.
The Trump family is right in the middle of this chaos. World Liberty Financial is tying itself to public firms like ALT5 Sigma. This blurs the line between the White House and the exchange floor. It creates a massive conflict of interest where policy decisions could be made to protect the family’s own crypto bags. By 2026, we expect this to force a massive regulatory battle. The government might try to save the markets, but the debt is already too big. The music is still playing, but the exits are getting smaller every day.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.