Trump, Farage and the Infinite Money Machine – Will crypto wreck politics and the world economy?

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. Cryptocurrency has come a long way since it was a fringe enthusiasm for get-rich-quick bros and anti-state libertarian fantasists. Now “stablecoins” like Tether are on the verge of becoming a parallel banking system in the US, except much less regulated. And the moneymaking opportunities that crypto affords are corrupting American politics to a staggering degree. Why is stablecoin more potent than regular crypto? Is the Trump Administration’s crypto boosterism essentially an enrichment scheme for the Trump family? WTF is going on with “Trumpcoin” and “Melaniacoin”? How deeply are Nigel Farage and Reform UK committed to bringing all this to Britain? And what happens if a mega stablecoin falls over? The FT’s Katie Martin takes Rafael Behr on an enthralling nightmare tour of “the biggest conflict of interest in history.” www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Rafael Behr. Producer: Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Chris Jones. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Artwork by James Parrett. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:00.5	VisitMedexpress.co.com.ukest.com.com. podcast to get started today. There's a Wall Street legend of the shrewd investor who sold before the great crash of
1:05.1	1929 when he got a share tip from the boy shining his shoes.
1:09.7	The point being, when even that kid is caught
1:11.7	up in the hype, it's time to get out. So what if it isn't a shoe shine boy but Donald Trump?
1:17.8	And it isn't old-fashioned shares, but cryptocurrency. How worried should we be when the world's
1:23.1	most powerful man is all in on what could be the world's riskiest investment. You're listening to the bunker,
1:29.5	news without the nonsense. I'm Raphael Bear, and in this episode, we're talking crypto.
1:35.5	To help me understand this stuff, because frankly I'd struggle without a clever person to explain it to me,
1:40.9	I'm joined by Katie Martin, FT Markets columnist, co-host of their unhedged podcast, and
1:46.9	fully licensed Brain Box. Hi, Katie. Thanks for stopping by. I'm worried about the Brain Box tag,
1:53.0	but I'll go with it. Just take it. Yeah, take compliments where you can get them. That's my,
1:56.3	that's my approach. Look, when I first started hearing about crypto, probably via Bitcoin around 2009, 2010, I basically decided I wasn't going to spend too much energy understanding deep down how it actually works at the nerdy encryption tech level, the blockchain, all that. I basically hoped it would just go away or at least stay as a kind of Dungeons and Dragons
	...

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