Trump Tweets Crypto Rant — What Is the Bitcoin Reference Really About?

Over the last few years, United States President Donald Trump’s tweetstorms have become a peculiar yet amusing feature of American public life. The president’s off-the-cuff comments have served a wide variety of purposes, from enriching political discourse with the mysterious term covfefe to delivering direct threats — furnished with proper capitalization — to the leadership of the nations deemed U.S. adversaries. The most newsworthy rants almost invariably felt improvised, emotional and reactive. However, the historic series of tweets that constituted the first-ever public comment on cryptocurrencies by a sitting U.S. president didn’t seem to fit the same mold.

If anything, the three-prong statement comes across as consistent, strategically timed and unusually well-articulated. It opens with a general critique of cryptocurrencies, then proceeds to extend the punch to Libra, Facebook’s much-discussed prospective digital currency, and concludes with a feel-good…