Trump family says U.S. dollar needs an upgrade, and they can do it

Since the dollar was created in 1792, U.S. presidents and their families have generally been content with the status quo of effectively giving the national government a monopoly on issuing currency and outlawing the use of foreign currency.

Consider the launch of the dollar the country’s Initial Coin Offering. Back when the U.S. government was hustling to surpass the dominance of the Spanish pieces of eight then in common circulation throughout the country.

When presidents have said anything about the dollar itself, it was generally to reiterate the U.S. government’s “strong dollar” policy.

That continued more or less uninterrupted through 46 presidencies  — until last March, when a company partly owned by President Donald Trump and his family began to market an alternative to the dollar, a cryptocurrency dubbed “USD1.”

Now, the president’s two oldest sons are telling CNBC on the sidelines of a day-long crypto event they hosted why that should change.

Marketed as a stablecoin, USD1’s value would track the dollar, much as the dollar when it was created in 1792 was initially pegged to the value of the then-dominant Spanish silver dollar.

The Trumps’ company, World Liberty Financial, touts USD1 as an improvement on official U.S. currency. The firm’s website brands its stablecoin as “The Dollar. Upgraded.” And it calls the coin “still the US dollar, but for a new era.”

On Wednesday, the firm held its first World Liberty Forum at Mar-a-Lago, the club owned by President Trump and operated as his winter White House.

The event, coming just before the first anniversary of the release of USD1, brought together financiers, technologists, television personalities, the president of the world soccer organization FIFA and the artist Nicki Minaj.

From a Mar-a-Lago ballroom stage beneath an enormous stylized golden eagle sculpture, the message to attendees was that the old U.S. dollar needs to be modernized, that the private sector is the place to drive that innovation, and that stablecoins will help taxpayers by creating structural demand for U.S. government debt.

In fact, World Liberty backers argue, the new cryptocurrency they are building is not a threat to the dollar at all, but will help ensure the dollar remains dominant in global crypto finance – because USD1’s value is pegged to it.

But one big question is why, if the dollar needs modernizing, should that be done by the private sector.

And why should the venture be in the private hands of the president and his family, and not in the hands of the U.S. Treasury.

CNBC put those questions to the president’s sons, World Liberty Financial’s co-founders, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, in a small event space just off Mar-a-Lago’s swimming pool.

“This is actually going to preserve dollar hegemony,” Donald Trump Jr. replied.

“There’s crypto companies that are the top five buyers in the world,” he…