Pro-Crypto Palantir Co-Founder Weirdly Angry About Trump’s Crypto Plan

President Donald Trump recently announced the launch of a federal cryptocurrency strategic reserve—thus realizing a long held goal of the web3 community. During his announcement, Trump named five particular tokens as being associated with the future reserve, sending the prices of those tokens screaming to the heavens. The asset prices then, predictably, crashed, leading Bloomberg to dub the reserve announcement the “Trump Pump.”

Many crypto stans were excited about Trump’s announcement but, surprisingly, Palantir co-founder, crypto fan, and Trump supporter Joe Lonsdale, came out to blast the decision. On X, Lonsdale wrote a rambling series of missives, the real intent of which is somewhat difficult to divine.

“Taxation is theft. It should be kept to a minimum. It’s wrong to steal my money for grift on the left; it’s also wrong to tax me for crypto bro schemes,” Lonsdale wrote on the social media site. “Cut it out with these schemes guys.”

After reprimanding the administration, Lonsdale doubled back and made it clear that he wasn’t dissing the crypto industry itself.

“To be clear I am PRO CRYPTO. I own BTC [Bitcoin] and some of these. And I agree the SEC has been terrible, and that we should support the sector with clear laws and precedent. But to me, that doesn’t include government money buying in! Not the proper, principled role of government.”

Across the board, Lonsdale’s comments make little to no sense. All “taxation is theft”—except, apparently, the billions of dollars in taxpayer money that has ended up in the coffers of the company Lonsdale helped found. By the billionaire’s logic, he, himself, has helped facilitate theft from the American taxpayer on a gargantuan and ongoing basis.

“Cut it out with these schemes guys.” Isn’t that the whole point of crypto industry??

From Lonsdale’s perspective, the government shouldn’t “buy in” to crypto. However, Lonsdale’s concern may be somewhat premature, as nobody currently seems to know how Trump will fund and/or orchestrate the crypto strategic reserve. It’s not clear who is going to hold the bag for the new reserve, or whether it’ll even happen.

After Lonsdale’s tweets blew up, he felt the need to backtrack somewhat and make sure it was known that he was still MAGA all the way: “Since this is getting attention: A – I’m a HUGE supporter of this admin, not just DOGE but many other aspects of HHS, DOD, and more. B – to help crypto, if the industry is clever it’ll sue the SEC for Biden-era nonsense, and get binding settlements to treat it fairly!” the billionaire posted, helpfully.

So in Lonsdale’s view, the best thing the federal government can do is take money from the creepy defense contractors he creates (with, it should be noted, money from the CIA) and, also, apparently, get sued into submission for punishing out of control crypto companies. If Lonsdale’s views are indicative of the broader ideological sympathies endemic to his economic milieu, it’s no surprise that America is in deep shit.