Trump announces or pardons Assange. Is Trump's promise an empty promise?

Compiled by: Jinse Finance

Trump said that if elected president, he would "very seriously consider" pardoning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.  

Affected by the news that Trump is considering pardoning Assange, data shows that AssangeDAO (JUSTICE) rose 36.6% in 1 hour and is now at $0.0001961.

Who is Assange? Does he have a connection with cryptocurrency? Will Trump's series of promises on cryptocurrency be just empty checks?

1. Who is Assange?

Julian Paul Assange is an Australian journalist and activist who founded the whistleblower website WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks published a series of declassified events provided by Chelsea Manning, an intelligence analyst of the US Army, in 2010, which attracted international attention.

On November 30, 2010, at the request of the International Public Prosecutor's Office in Sweden, Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Assange on suspicion of sexual crimes. On December 7, Assange surrendered to the London Metropolitan Police, but he denied the charges. On June 19, 2012, Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK to seek political asylum while on bail. In August of the same year, Assange was granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government and lived in the embassy for nearly seven years.

Before becoming the spokesperson and editor of WikiLeaks, Assange was a physics and mathematics student, programmer, and hacker. He has moved from one country to another, living in a place of no fixed address, and occasionally appears in public to express his views on press freedom, censorship and investigative journalism.

On April 4, 2019, WikiLeaks tweeted a message from a senior Ecuadorian government official saying that Assange would be expelled on the pretext of a scandal and that an agreement had been reached with the UK to arrest him.

On April 11, 2019, the London Metropolitan Police said it had obtained permission from the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK to enter the embassy and arrest Julian Assange.

 On May 23, 2019, the US government further charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Editors of newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as press freedom organizations, criticized the government's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act and described it as an attack on the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees press freedom.

On December 10, 2021, the UK Supreme Court in London ruled that Assange could be extradited to the United States to face charges.

On July 1, 2022, Assange announced a formal appeal against the extradition order.

On May 20, 2024, the UK High Court again heard Assange's extradition appeal.

II. Assange and Cryptocurrency

1. Assange has received a large number of cryptocurrency donations

On April 11, 2019, Assange shouted "You must resist, you can resist" when he was arrested by the police at the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK. The incident instantly caused a strong reaction in the cryptocurrency community. Within 24 hours of the incident, the Bitcoin address officially announced by Wikipedia received hundreds of BTC donations, with a total transaction amount of more than $40,000. On the same day, almost all of the top 100 currencies by market value showed a downward trend, with Bitcoin falling by more than 6% in a single day.

Since 2010, WikiLeaks has successively released war diaries in Afghanistan, records of the Iraq war, and tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables. On December 5, 2010, the U.S. government stopped all donation channels from traditional finance such as credit cards and bank cards. In order to keep the website running and continue to speak for justice, passers-by who know Bitcoin and related communities began to call on WikiLeaks to accept Bitcoin donations to break the financial blockade. This proposal was strongly opposed by Satoshi Nakamoto at the time; and the coincidence that Satoshi Nakamoto left the last post casually and disappeared from Bitcointalk a week after the incident made many people suspect that the WikiLeaks incident was the catalyst that prompted Satoshi Nakamoto to leave the project early.

The donated Bitcoin brought Assange hundreds of times the profit. During the Bitcoin bull market in 2017, Assange once provoked the U.S. government on Twitter, saying that he was grateful for their financial blockade of WikiLeaks, otherwise WikiLeaks would not have started using and investing in Bitcoin, and obtained a return of more than 500 times in a few years.

2. Assange and NFT Auction

On February 10, 2022, AssangeDAO, named after WikiLeaks founder Assange, won the Censored part of Julian Assange x Pak's NFT series, Clock, for 1,593 ETH (worth about $53 million).

Clock is an independent NFT, and the prototype is a silent timer that counts the number of days Assange has spent in prison. The proceeds raised from the sale of NFTs will be used to pay Assange's legal fees and donated to the Wau Holland Foundation, which defends Julian Assange. In addition, AssangeDAO's JUSTICE governance tokens are available for donors to claim on Juicebox.

On the morning of February 9, AssangeDAO ended its fundraising on Juicebox, raising a total of 17,422 ETH.

3. Trump's promises to win over crypto voters

1. Consider pardoning Assange

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Donald Trump said that if elected president, he would "very seriously consider" pardoning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.  

Affected by the news that Trump is considering pardoning Assange, data shows that AssangeDAO (JUSTICE) rose 36.6% in one hour and is now trading at $0.0001961.

For details, please click "Trump: If elected president, I will seriously consider pardoning Julian Assange"

2. Release the founder of Silk Road

Trump promised that if he is re-elected president, he will commute the life sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbrich to a served sentence.

For details, please click "Trump: If re-elected, the founder of Silk Road will be released"

3. The United States must be at the top of the cryptocurrency industry

On May 25, 2024, Trump announced on Truth Social, a social media platform under Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG): "Our country must be at the forefront of this field, and there is no second place."

For details, please click "Trump: The United States must be at the top of the cryptocurrency industry"

4. Industry insiders' criticism of Trump

Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Cardano:The Trump administration "basically ignored" the cryptocurrency industry, while "the Biden administration has taken a concerted action to eliminate cryptocurrency." 

Monica Taher, former head of technology and business innovation for the Salvadoran government:Cryptocurrency "is used by some opportunistic politicians to enhance their status and present themselves as innovators.

Adam Cochrane, partner at Cinneamhain Ventures:Trump "has a decades-long history of reselling" and "selling out others for his own benefit."

Alexander Bloom, partner at Prime Hedge Fund:Trump "has a record of making promises to desperate people/groups for his own purposes and then not delivering on those promises. ”

V. Can Trump’s promise of cryptocurrency draw more votes?

On March 14, a poll released by Paradigm showed that 19% of registered U.S. voters had purchased cryptocurrency, concluding that “a fifth of the country’s population is not a niche group.”

The Paradigm poll further suggests that cryptocurrency holders are willing to switch parties. The survey showed that 48% of respondents support Trump in 2024, but only 39% voted for him in 2020.

This could be crucial to turning the tide in so-called “swing states” where the outcome of the election is far from certain.

Due to their competitive nature, swing states receive a great deal of attention and campaign resources from both parties during elections. Overall, these data suggest that cryptocurrency owners are a swing voting group in their own right, and this group could be decisive if the election is another close race.

According to the DGC survey, 26% of respondents said they pay attention to candidates’ stances on cryptocurrency, and 21% of respondents said cryptocurrency is an important issue to consider during the upcoming election.

The overall stance of respondents on cryptocurrency may be attributed to a sense of over-regulation: 55% are concerned that policymakers will stifle innovation through over-regulation.

Sixth, Trump concept coins rise

AssangeDAO: Affected by the news that Trump is considering pardoning Assange, AssangeDAO token JUSTICE has risen more than 10 times since May 26.

FreeRossDAO: On May 26, affected by the news that Trump will pardon the creator of "Silk Road", FreeRossDAO token FREE is now reported at $0.0003797, a 24-hour increase of 245.9%.

TRUMP: On May 27, Trump-themed Meme coin MAGA (TRUMP) broke through $13, reaching $13.09, with a 24-hour increase of 24.4%, continuing to set a record high. TRUMP's market value exceeds $600 million.

For more information, please see the special topic "Trump starts the battle for the "crypto election""

Source: Wikipedia, Bitcoin Magazine, Hashpai, Golden Finance