President Donald Trump Is Making Bank Off of Cryptocurrency, and Big Tech Wants Back in on the Action

Meta is now looking to revisit its cryptocurrency plans as Mark Zuckerberg's company looks to launch a stablecoin to facilitate payouts

President Donald Trump is making bank off of cryptocurrency, and Big Tech wants back in on the action.

Meta is now looking to revisit its cryptocurrency plans as Mark Zuckerberg's company looks to launch a stablecoin to facilitate payouts on its social media platforms, according to a new report from Fortune.

According to sources knowledgeable of these preliminary crypto stages, Meta's new stablecoin plans are being spearheaded by the company's VP of product, Giner Baker, who previously worked in fintech and currently serves on the board of crypto organization Stellar Development Foundation. Meta reportedly held discussions with crypto infrastructure companies earlier this year.

Meta's crypto-related plans seem to center on a stablecoin used to facilitate payouts to creators on its platforms, like Instagram.

Meta's stablecoin history

Back in 2019, before the company changed its name to Meta, Facebook announced a sprawling cryptocurrency project that included a new blockchain and crypto wallet for the social media platform. The centerpiece of Facebook's crypto project, however, was the company's plans to create its own stablecoin called Libra.

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency token that's meant to maintain a stable price. In the crypto space, where the price of crypto tokens and meme coins is, well, unstable, stablecoins are meant to provide holders with a relatively safe place to store their money. (Although even that doesn't always work out.)

Facebook's Libra project hit some early roadblocks. In fact, President Trump, who was serving his first term in office, also shared a scathing critique of cryptocurrency as a whole, specifically mentioning Facebook's Libra.

“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They are a form of advanced Monopoly, which is not bad in itself, but they have no intrinsic value. They are a total scam and will be shut down by the time President Trump is finished with his second term.

“They are bringing crime, especially narcotics trade, to a level that has never been seen before and they are concentrating on the poor and the disenfranchisement, with no true benefit for the vast majority of the people.

“The generation that built America would not recognize the country today.”

Regardless, Libra continued on. In late 2020, as cryptocurrency was set to boom, Facebook announced a rebrand for the project.

By early 2022, however, the company now known as Meta was still struggling to get approval for its crypto plans from regulators and the company was planning to pull the plug on the project. Then, crypto came crashing down by mid-2022 as a slew of major cryptocurrency tokens and companies failed. By that summer, Meta shut down the final remnants of its crypto project.

Things are different for crypto now

Fast forward to 2025, and a lot has changed.

President Trump, now serving his second term, feels very differently about cryptocurrency. Trump launched his own meme coin earlier this year. $TRUMP has already resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for the president and his crypto companies from fees alone.

One of Trump's crypto companies, World Liberty Financial, has also launched its own memecoin, USD1. An Abu Dhabi investment firm has already announced a $2 billion investment in Trump's stablecoin.

Congress and financial regulators under Trump have also been largely silent on the matter, which isn't surprising considering they aren't exactly known for swift action and prefer to focus on more pressing issues like, oh, the complete collapse of the American banking system.

So, the moment is ripe for anyone looking to start a crypto scheme, and Meta is apparently poised to take advantage of it.