I am crossing the Rubicon and backing the Republican Party and President Trump.
Many — including a former version of myself — get trapped in a mental framework that becomes their identity and prevents them from radically evolving their thinking with new facts and information. I finally broke free from it.
My journey has been a gradual political 180 from where I stood in every previous election. It has been an eye-opening process of disenchantment, zero-basing lifelong beliefs, and rebuilding from there.
In 2017, a good friend enlisted me to pitch the DNC to raise $100M from Silicon Valley founders and executives. The aim was to use these funds and know-how to build a CRM and tech platform to prevent a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s inadequate, outdated 2016 campaign. We met with DNC leadership, who told us we could raise that money, but it would have to go to the general fund; a single-digit percentage would then be allocated to tech. In the wake of one of their most shocking failures, they didn’t want the help.
The next series of realizations began in 2019 while I was at Meta, right after we announced the Libra white paper. I testified before the Senate and the House and subsequently spent significant time in DC, engaging with lawmakers, cabinet members, regulators, and two White House administrations. At the time, I still believed the mainstream idea that Democrats were all about serving the People. However, I was shocked to learn that, for the most part, Republicans cared more deeply about their constituents, while Democrats, in my experience, cared more about government power and control. This is my observation on balance, with many stories to back it up. I also found that more Republicans wanted to understand our project’s goals and took the time to learn about the risks of censoring payments and controlling the network. I found myself remarkably aligned with them.
Then COVID came, revealing more. While I don’t subscribe to the most malicious vaccine conspiracy theories, I do take offense at the censorship machine put in place to hide the origin of the virus from the NIH-funded Wuhan lab and all dissenting voices on vaccinations and lockdowns. At that time, I fully appreciated why Republicans value freedom of speech and preventing censorship.
This trend of spinning and manufacturing a parallel reality to serve the Dem agenda, solidified by complicit mainstream media, hit home with the Hunter Biden laptop story, the coordinated vilification of President Trump and his followers, and President Biden’s cognitive decline — depriving voters of a voice in a proper primary. These examples displayed the hubris of the current Dem leadership. You must think the American people are fools to believe the spin on these issues. I despise this elite vs. general population ideology viscerally.
This version of the Democratic Party is sidelining moderates and centrists and has adopted an increasingly leftist ideology. This drift to the left has dictated policies from which I’ve found myself estranged.
On the domestic front, there has been a total departure from the core American value system of meritocracy, an extreme and weaponized DEI agenda, an open door to massive illegal immigration, and a once-fringe narrative, now mainstream within the party, of vilifying success. This shift is also causing us to fall behind due to an anti-innovation regulatory climate, notably on crypto and soon AI — two non-linear technological breakthroughs that will likely determine tomorrow’s leading countries.
On foreign policy, the administration is exacerbating tensions with Russia through an aggressive NATO expansion narrative focused on Ukraine and prolonging an unwinnable war. This is costing American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, the world hundreds of thousands of lives, depleting the U.S. military arsenal and risking World War III. On Iran, this administration is continuing a misguided Obama-era plan to bring Iran closer to the West by unfreezing Trump-era sanctions, thus giving the Mollahs’ regime the ability to fund terrorism and pursue its anti-America, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish agenda. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was also handled disastrously. We’re leaving a door open for China to invade Taiwan by coming across as weak. Most importantly to me, concerning Israel, the administration is enabling Iran to fund Hamas and Hezbollah, restraining Israel in its fight against its enemies, thus prolonging another conflict, which is costing more lives on both sides and allowing unprecedented levels of antisemitism to rise at home.
I believe we need a President who is unequivocally pro: America, the Constitution, business, Bitcoin/crypto, innovation, Israel, small government, legal immigration, free speech, meritocracy, and common sense — and anti: regulatory proliferation, illegal immigration, unjust wars, Iran’s current regime, and domestic groups that oppose American values. These issues are central to President Trump’s platform.
Naturally, I disagree with President Trump and the GOP on some issues, particularly women’s reproductive rights. While I’ve come to learn that extreme views exist in both parties, I firmly believe that women should have the unalienable right to make their own decisions on this polarizing topic. President Trump confirmed he was against a national abortion ban and supported the Supreme Court’s decision on maintaining access to mifepristone, which was reassuring and a sign that the party was moving closer to the center.
It’s impossible to close this post without mentioning President Trump’s recent assassination attempt. The courage and resolve he displayed seconds after being hit by a bullet was awe-inspiring for his followers and detractors alike. This was a man, however imperfect, who, at that moment, incarnated the American spirit in the most vivid way, starting to bring a split nation together.
Some claim that reelecting President Trump will bring our democracy to its knees. However, the alternative — having unelected individuals with this much power and no accountability run our government coupled with four more years of bad policies at home and abroad — might present a more significant threat. Neither will likely change in a Harris administration and could potentially worsen.
In this pivotal moment, confronted with the choices we have, I am endorsing and supporting a return to a Republican administration in 2025.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I’ve decided to talk more about our inner workings at @Lightspark to share more of the journey with the community of builders out there. In that spirit, this week, we spent time challenging ourselves quite hard on our choice to build on Lightning. Here’s what happened 🧵 1/12
I always tend to push hard on avoiding to continue on a current glide path because of sunk costs. It’s healthy to challenge past decisions when new information becomes available and either recommit and double down, or change direction. 2/12
We want to help build a truly open, interoperable, extremely cheap, protocol for money/payments on the Internet. One that settles in near realtime, and enables anyone to send and receive small or large amounts cost effectively with a great user experience. 3/12
Follow-up of my last tweet. A small 🧵 about how the EU keeps falling behind when it has all the talent and resources to be a leading region in the world. In the early days of Libra, I had fascinating conversations with senior leaders at the ECB. 1/14
The short version of it was that Europe resented the fact that the vast majority of transactions were settled on US payment networks. 2/14
In their minds, the US leveraged its reserve currency and payments networks to overreach with unilateral sanctions, impacting EU member states. 3/14
Today with Facebook becoming Meta, we're unifying our payments and financial services unit and products under the @Novi brand. Let me unpack what this will mean across @Meta. 1/7
We've been in the business of facilitating payments across our apps for over a decade, and we've processed over $100B in the last 12 months across our products. 2/7
These experiences range from person-to-person payments in the 🇺🇸 in @Messenger, in 🇧🇷 and 🇮🇳 in @WhatsApp, enabling our donations product, facilitating checkout for merchants, enabling advertisers to easily buy ads, and now allowing xborder payments with the @Novi pilot. 3/7
I don’t think we fully internalize the compounding effects of the labor market issues combined with our supply chain disruption and macro trends. A mini 🧵 as I’d love to head expert opinions on this topic. 1/5
I was talking to the CEO of one of the largest hotel chains in the country, and he confirmed what I had heard at a smaller scale from restaurant owners. The sector can’t adequately re-hire people. People have received govt stimulus checks, they’re not eager to go back. 2/5
Meanwhile, because of our unprecedented disruptions in our supply chain, we can’t get the products we need/want fast enough (shout out to @typesfast for his heroic work to fix this). 3/5
Remittances are a critical way to achieve financial inclusion. Today, we’re rolling out a small pilot of the @Novi digital wallet app in two countries — the US and Guatemala. People can send and receive money instantly, securely, and with no fees. 1/8
We’re doing a pilot to test core feature functions, and our operational capabilities in customer care and compliance. We’re also hopeful this will demonstrate a new stablecoin use case (as a payments instrument) beyond how they are typically used today. 2/8
The 🇺🇸-🇬🇹 remittance corridor is an important one. In Guatemala, 56% of people lack access to financial services, despite nearly 100% having mobile phones. Money sent from family & friends abroad contributes more than 14% of GDP and 90% of those remittances come from the US. 3/8
Excited with the progress of @Libra_ in the last 9 months. I keep on thinking about all the people and small businesses that could benefit from the Libra Network already being operational — especially now during these times of unprecedented hardship. 1/8
The Libra Association is now funded by its members (with less than 10% of the funding coming from Facebook), and has adapted its plans after engaging with key stakeholders globally. 2/8
Most notable evolutions are:
a) the creation of single currency stablecoins, e.g. ≋USD, ≋EUR, ≋GBP, in addition to Libra Coin (≋LBR), which will now be a Move smart contract “stitching” together fixed nominal weights of underlying stablecoins. 3/8