Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

Donald Trump says he was “saved by God to make America great again”. Yet the best rebuttal to his presidency so far has come from a priest — the Episcopal bishop of Washington.

The Rt Rev Mariann Budde’s sermon on Tuesday went where business leaders and even Democratic politicians have struggled to go. While Trump sat a few metres away in the congregation, she asked him to show mercy to gay, lesbian and transgender people and to immigrants who are “scared” by his policies.

“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land,” Budde said at the service. It wasn’t a fleeting rebuke to Trumpism; it was an eloquent 15-minute argument for a different politics.

Trump sat there, fidgeting then fuming in the National Cathedral. His vice-president JD Vance, a Catholic, dissented by whispering to his wife. Perhaps they weren’t expecting it. Because at the inauguration the previous day, they were given a very different religious reception.

Preachers described Trump’s return as a “miracle”. One pastor, Lorenzo Sewell, invoked Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in his honour.

In 2023, the charismatic Sewell was locked out of his Detroit church because its constitution had been changed and he was able to disenfranchise rank-and-file members. Shortly after the inauguration, he launched a crypto token, telling X users: “I need you to go buy the official Lorenzo Sewell coin.” The currency’s price then quickly plunged more than 90 per cent.

Who represents the Christian view of Trump? Is it Sewell with his pro-Trump, pro-prosperity talk of self-reliance, or the liberal Budde, who wants to speak for the marginalised? And, if Christianity can encompass both outcomes, is it much use for understanding and confronting Trump?

Budde backed up her address with references in the Bible. She is in line with Pope Francis, who has criticised Trump’s planned mass deportations of immigrants as a “disgrace”.

In contrast, pro-Trump spirituality often seems to rely on taking words from their context. Sewell stripped King’s dream of its intended meaning. (As for Sewell’s oratory, let me just say: the phrase “Free at last” is not meant to sum up what the audience feels when you stop talking.)

Or take the conflation of Christianity and growth. Another conservative speaker at the inauguration, Rabbi Ari Berman, suggested that George Washington had called faith and morality indispensable to “American prosperity”. In fact, Washington said they were essential to “political prosperity”. The context, back in 1796, was an appeal for national unity, and a warning not to trust in “the absolute power of an individual”. Trump would have fidgeted through that speech, too.

But pro-Trump pastors are accepted as a valid part of the church like any other. And the pews are with the president, too. According to Michael Emerson, a researcher on religion, practising Christians are now heavily Republican, because liberal Protestants and Catholics have disproportionately stopped going to church.

Last year Trump won around 60 per cent of the Christian vote, and more than 80 per cent of white evangelicals. He paid hush money to a porn star, has pledged to veto any federal abortion ban and he did not seem to place his hand on the Bible at the inauguration. But some white evangelicals see him as a useful vessel, someone who will allow them to steer the conversation.

Ironically, having invoked God multiple times in his inaugural address, Trump complained that Budde’s sermon had mixed politics and religion. One thing Sewell and Budde agree on is that you can’t keep politics out of Christianity. If the church decides simply to bless whoever is in power, it ends up compromised.

The question becomes: is religion downstream from politics? Will Trump’s supporters simply retrofit their faith on to their preferred politics, and his opponents do the opposite? The answer is probably: mostly, but not always. Surely there’s no point in listening to a preacher if you don’t think they’ll ever change your mind.

“When we know what is true, it’s incumbent upon us to speak the truth even when, especially when, it costs us,” Budde said. Her achievement shouldn’t be measured in how many people attend her next service. It should be measured in how many other people feel a duty to speak out against what they know is wrong.

henry.mance@ft.com

TRUMP and MELANIA tokens generate buzz, but PEPETO, with strong utility and growth, is quickly gaining momentum in the meme coin market.

Trump and Melania enter crypto, but Pepeto captures growing momentum

The cryptocurrency world was electrified as President-elect Donald Trump introduced the TRUMP token ahead of his inauguration. Initially capped at 200 million tokens, with plans to expand to 1 billion over the next three years, TRUMP saw a staggering $36.15 billion in 24-hour trading volume. 

Not long after, First Lady-to-be Melania Trump unveiled her own token, MELANIA, built on the Solana blockchain. Early investors have already seen massive returns, with TRUMP’s market cap surpassing $9 billion. However, critics are questioning the longevity of these political meme coins due to their heavy centralization and lack of utility.

Meanwhile, a new contender is stealing the spotlight: PEPETO, the god of frogs. Unlike TRUMP and MELANIA, which rely heavily on branding and hype, PEPETO combines narrative-driven appeal with robust utility and a rapidly growing community. With over $3.7 million raised in its presale and a social media following exceeding 55,000 users, PEPETO is proving to be a force to reckon with in the meme coin space.

TRUMP & MELANIA: Hype vs. sustainability?

TRUMP and MELANIA have used their ties to the Trump name to create buzz. Early whales have already capitalized, with one investor reportedly turning $12 million into $23.8 million within hours of TRUMP’s launch. However, concerns about centralization loom large, as 80% of TRUMP tokens are controlled by affiliated organizations, leading to skepticism about its long-term potential.

Why PEPETO is winning over analysts and investors

In stark contrast, PEPETO is gaining traction for its emphasis on utility and sustainability. Here’s what sets it apart:

• High Staking Rewards: With annual returns of 387%, PEPETO provides an unmatched opportunity for passive income.
• Cross-Chain Bridge: Pepeto’s technology enables seamless 30-second transfers across blockchains, reducing fees and delays.
• PepetoSwap Exchange: A zero-fee platform designed to streamline meme coin trading, eliminating liquidity issues and high costs.
• Community Governance: Through its DAO model, PEPETO empowers its community with decision-making power, fostering transparency and trust.
• Low Entry Price: Currently priced at just $0.000000105 in presale, PEPETO offers an affordable opportunity for early investors to join a high-potential project.

A thriving community and growing hype

Unlike the centralized dynamics of TRUMP and MELANIA, PEPETO thrives on grassroots support. Its community has surpassed 55,000 across platforms like Twitter, Telegram, and Instagram, with daily growth reflecting its increasing popularity. This strong foundation not only boosts its credibility but also highlights its potential as a leader in the meme coin space.

Whales are betting big on PEPETO

Whale trackers have reported significant accumulation of PEPETO tokens, a strong indicator of confidence from high-net-worth investors. While TRUMP faces volatility due to its hype-driven nature, PEPETO’s utility-first approach offers a more sustainable path to growth. Analysts believe its upcoming exchange listings and groundbreaking features position PEPETO as a game-changer.

The next big meme coin?

As TRUMP and MELANIA dominate headlines, PEPETO quietly builds a foundation for long-term success. With its presale nearing conclusion and the launch of PepetoSwap and exchange listings imminent, PEPETO is not just a meme coin — it’s a movement.

How to join the PEPETO movement

Getting started with PEPETO is simple:

1. Set Up a Wallet: Use MetaMask, Trust Wallet, or any Ethereum-compatible wallet.
2. Fund a Wallet: Add ETH, USDT, or BNB.
3. Connect to the Presale: Visit pepeto.io to purchase tokens.
4. Stake Tokens: Start earning staking rewards right away.

About PEPETO

PEPETO combines the fun of meme coins with real-world utility, including a zero-fee exchange, cross-chain bridge, and lucrative staking rewards. As the god of frogs, PEPETO is redefining the meme coin space for 2025 and beyond.

For more information on PEPETO, visit their website, X, or Telegram.

The official X account of the global electronic marketplace Nasdaq was apparently hacked and used to promote a fake meme coin named STONKS.

Blockchain data shows that the bogus token’s market cap skyrocketed to $80 million before eventually collapsing.

How the Scam Unfolded

According to various reports, the attackers took control of the Nasdaq account and linked it to a fake X profile, @nasdaqmeme, complete with a gold verified badge marking it as an affiliate.

They then made a post promoting the fake STONKS coin and retweeted it with the Nasdaq account, which has over 133,000 followers. The retweet and the apparent connection between the two accounts created a facade of credibility, duping unsuspecting investors into buying the token.

Within hours, STONK’s value soared 390 times its original price, with data from DEXscreener showing that the token reached a market capitalization of $80 million and trading volumes in excess of $185 million.

However, the cryptocurrency’s meteoric rise ended abruptly as its value plummeted to zero, leaving investors with huge losses. Some accounts suggest that the scammers walked away with at least $4 million after rugging the coin.

Interestingly, the fraudulent profile used in the con was a copycat of an existing Solana meme coin, STNK, with the social media handle @STONKS_SOL.

The legitimate STONKS team has warned the crypto community about the rip-off and announced plans to sue the sham project.

STNK was launched in April 2021 as the first-ever joke token on the Solana network. It is based on the “Stonks” meme created in 2017 by Henry Hooper and made famous by the Gamestop short squeeze saga on r/wallstreetbets.

Social Accounts Under Threat

The hacking incident sparked widespread reactions across the community, with many expressing disbelief at its audacity and sophistication. Crypto trader CRG described it as the “best grift” they had ever seen, while other users pointed out the alarming ease with which the fraudsters secured a verified affiliate badge.

At the time of this writing, Nasdaq had not commented on the incident, although the offending post has been deleted, and the @nasdaqmeme account has been suspended.

Incidents of bad actors taking over social media accounts to promote phony cryptocurrencies have been on the rise lately. Towards the end of last year, blockchain investigator ZachXBT exposed an elaborate scheme where hackers compromised 15 X accounts and used them to promote fake coins. The criminals reportedly made away with at least $500,000 from the operation.

In another incident, a different group of scammers targeted the social media accounts of celebrities, including singer Usher, rapper Wiz Khalifa, and actor Dean Norris, to push a slew of counterfeit tokens on Pump.fun, stealing as much as $3.5 million in the process.

• Phishing campaign mimics CAPTCHA to deliver hidden malware commands
• PowerShell command hidden in verification leads to Lumma Stealer attack
• Educating users on phishing tactics is key to preventing such attacks

CloudSek has uncovered a sophisticated method for distributing the Lumma Stealer malware which poses a serious threat to Windows users.

This technique relies on deceptive human verification pages that trick users into unwittingly executing harmful commands.

Solana (SOL) has been riding a wave of volatility, recently hitting a new all-time high of $295 before dropping over 22% amid market fluctuations. Despite this sharp correction, SOL has shown resilience by recovering much of its losses, leaving investors optimistic about its potential for further gains in the coming weeks.

Related Reading

Top analyst Jelle has weighed in on the situation, providing a detailed technical analysis that offers insight into SOL’s current price action. According to Jelle, Solana is experiencing “more violent moves, as expected,” while compressing around its previous all-time highs. This compression is a natural phase following such a significant rally and is seen as a healthy consolidation that could set the stage for the next leg higher.

With key levels holding firm and sentiment improving, Solana appears well-positioned for a potential breakout. Investors are closely monitoring the market dynamics as SOL prepares for what could be another major surge.

As one of the standout performers in the crypto market, Solana’s ability to navigate this volatility and push past resistance levels will be crucial in determining its trajectory in the weeks ahead. The coming days could mark the start of a new chapter in SOL’s impressive journey.

Solana Testing Crucial Liquidity 

Solana has been making headlines with its aggressive price movements, especially after breaking its all-time high (ATH). Following its impressive rally, SOL has entered a phase of consolidation while holding key demand levels, signaling the potential for sustained bullish momentum. This period of compression is seen as a natural and healthy part of the market cycle, especially after such a strong upward move.

Crypto analyst Jelle recently shared a detailed technical analysis on X, shedding light on Solana’s current market behavior. According to Jelle, SOL has experienced violent price action moves as it compresses right around its previous all-time highs. This consolidation phase, while volatile, is necessary to build a solid foundation for the next leg higher. Jelle noted that it’s encouraging to see key levels holding firm, adding that it feels like it’s only a matter of time before Solana resumes its bullish trajectory.

Analysts across the board remain optimistic about Solana’s outlook, with many predicting that the coming months will be extremely bullish if SOL can maintain its current structure. Holding these key demand levels is critical to sustaining momentum, and a breakout from this consolidation phase could propel Solana into new price discovery.

Related Reading

As one of the most promising blockchain networks in the crypto space, Solana’s resilience amid aggressive price action highlights its strength and growing investor confidence. With technical and fundamental indicators aligning, Solana is poised to remain a standout performer as the market anticipates its next move. The coming weeks will be pivotal in determining whether SOL can capitalize on its strong foundation and deliver another wave of significant gains.

Price Action Details: Key Levels To Hold

Solana (SOL) is currently trading at $243, down over 10% since yesterday as the broader altcoin market faces selling pressure. This decline comes amid Bitcoin’s consolidation just below its all-time high (ATH), which has left altcoins struggling to maintain bullish momentum.

For SOL to recover and regain upward traction, it is crucial for bulls to defend the current price levels. Holding above $243 is key to preventing further downside, while a decisive push above the $265 resistance mark would signal a return to strength. Breaking this level with conviction could reignite investor confidence and set the stage for a renewed rally.

Related Reading

However, the risks of a deeper correction remain if SOL fails to hold support. A drop below $230 would likely trigger additional selling pressure, leading to extended losses and testing lower demand zones. Such a move would challenge Solana’s recent bullish structure and delay its chances of a recovery.

Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.

Payments remain the big unsolved use case of the internet. When we buy something online, we generally use a traditional payment method, like a credit card, which isn’t “native” to the experience. Your ability to transact with a merchant is verified by a third-party (like a bank), which raises costs and adds a lot of inconvenience for buyers and sellers.

Despite the huge growth of commerce online in the last three decades, most transactions occur outside of the browser. Marc Andreessen, who created Netscape, has referred to this as the internet’s “original sin.” “One would think it was the most obvious thing to do to build into the browser the ability to spend money, but you may have noticed that didn’t happen,” he said in 2019. “I think the original sin was that we couldn’t actually build economics, which is to say money, at the core of the internet.”

This matters because the cost is massive and borne by all of us. Economists have calculated the total cost of retail payments in the United States at as much as 2% of GDP, which is almost as much as the U.S. defense budget. Merchants frequently cite the cost of processing credit cards as some of their highest operating expenses, which is why many will ask you to pay additional charges to use a card in a store, or place a minimum on the amount one should spend. The United States, for all its ingenuity, has some of the highest social cost of payments in the developed world, numerous studies show.

We tend to forget that bitcoin was first proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto as a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” because a lot of crypto today isn’t focused on this use case. But maybe the next iteration of crypto development will help fix that.

That’s certainly the hope of Tyler Spalding, the founder of an Anvil, a new decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that reconceptualizes credit, which is the basis of all monetary systems.

How it works

Anvil is a system of Ethereum smart contracts that manages collateral and secures credit. It lets individuals and companies create letters of credit (LOCs) in lieu of traditional forms of money. You use it by locking up ether or USDC in the Anvil vault and receive an LOC for the specified amount. In effect, the system is a lot like a bank check that’s cashed against your account, except there’s no paper, delays or worries about whether the money will clear.

Spalding sees Anvil as a new form of money collateralized with crypto. “By issuing transparent and generalizable credit, Anvil provides sustainable liquidity — essentially creating trusted money for the global economic system,” he said. “Permissionless decentralized technologies can transform how collateral is managed by making the process more secure and more transparent.”

At the protocol level, there are no fees to transact with Anvil, Spalding said, and the technology is open-source. It’s community owned with 60% of the governance token distribution to partners and users, who can vote on operational matters. Spalding, who previously co-founded Flexa, a blockchain-based payments network, sees use cases for Anvil in traditional loans, DeFi counterparty credit (for exchanges or liquidity providers), asset bridging and payments. Three partners have indicated they want to build services using the protocol: Amdax, a digital asset trading and custody provider; Empowermint, which provides retail cash loans; and Flexa, which is using the protocol for asset collateralization against payments on its network. Because Anvil is open-source, these partners use the protocol freely, building their own services.

Anvil has no investors. The protocol was bootstrapped by Spalding and his collaborators over two years of development. Its systems were audited by Open Zeppelin and Trail of Bits, and Immunefi organized two bug bounty programs to find flaws needing to be fixed. Spalding feels comfortable that the system is safe for its ambitious aim of disintermediating banks from the payments and traditional credit-issuing process.

“We’ve been doing it a long time. We love this stuff,” Spalding said of his goal of bringing native payments to the internet and atoning for Andreessen’s original sin. “We want to get other people to get to use this. It’s a real-world use case. That’s the only thing that matters to me.”

Pocketpair, the company behind last year’s viral game Palworld, has a new venture: publishing indie games. Its first project, scheduled for release later this year, will be an as-yet-unnamed horror game from Surgent Studios, the developer behind 2024’s Tales of Kenzera: Zau.

Palworld, jokingly referred to as “Pokémon with guns,” was a breakout success last year, drawing in more than 25 million players in its first few months. The company’s step into publishing comes at a turbulent time for video games, especially smaller studios; last year, Among Us developer Innersloth announced its own move into publishing to help push projects forward. Pocketpair’s Palworld success, it seems, is allowing them to do the same.

“As the games industry continues to grow, more and more games find themselves struggling to get funded or greenlit,” John Buckley, head of Pocketpair Publishing, said in a press release announcing the new division. “We think this is a real shame, because there are so many incredible creators and ideas out there that just need a little help to become incredible games.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Pocketpair would work with Surgent Studios, which has struggled to find funding following the release of Zau. The developer put its team on hiatus last year as it sought a partner for its next Kenzera game, currently known as Project Uso.

Surgent’s deal with Pocketpair is separate from Uso, founder Abubakar Salim tells WIRED. Unlike the Afrofuturism of Zau, it’ll be a horror title meant to introduce players to something new. “We’re taking a little detour from the Tales of Kenzera universe,” Salim says.

Salim adds that the horror genre “is a fascinating space that taps into primal emotions, immersing audiences in a reality that’s removed from their own yet strikes something deep and dark within us all.” Pocketpair and Surgent gave few details about the game in Thursday’s announcement, other than to describe it as “short and weird.”

“The world is so raw right now, and it feels natural to craft an experience that reflects and feeds off that intensity,” Salim says.

Pocketpair Publishing has not announced any other future projects. The company has been embroiled in legal drama since last year, when Nintendo filed a lawsuit in Tokyo claiming Palworld infringed on its copyright. Nintendo did not respond to a request for comment. When asked if the lawsuit was of any concern to Surgent, Salim says the studio isn’t worried. “We’re really excited to be working with their new publishing wing to bring this game to life,” he says.