A 12-foot golden statue of Trump gripping a Bitcoin was placed outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday evening in Washington.
The installation appeared just before the Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate announcement. It stood along 3rd Street from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., pulling crowds as D.C. tried to make sense of a foam version of the president staring down Congress with a crypto in hand.
At 2 p.m., the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate by 0.25 percentage points, bringing the short-term rate from 4.3% to 4.1%. It’s the first rate cut since December, after a year of concerns about slowing job growth and rising unemployment.
The Fed also outlined plans for two more cuts before the end of this year, but said it only expects one cut in 2026. That didn’t sit well with Wall Street, which had priced in five cuts by next year, as Cryptopolitan extensively reported.
The statue was funded by a group of cryptocurrency investors, most of whom are staying anonymous. Their goal was to make a loud, unavoidable point about the future of crypto and government power. Hichem Zaghdoudi, who spoke for the group, said:
“The installation is designed to ignite conversation about the future of government-issued currency and is a symbol of the intersection between modern politics and financial innovation. As the Federal Reserve shapes economic policy, we hope this statue prompts reflection on cryptocurrency’s growing influence.”
To push the message even further, the group launched a memecoin on Pump.fun. They used multiple livestreams to pump the token and tie it directly to the statue stunt.
One organizer, speaking during a stream on Tuesday, said the statue was built using “extremely hard foam” to make it easier to move. Posts on their X account showed a machine carving out Trump’s head and several people lifting and placing the statue into position.
During the livestream, the same organizer said he hoped Trump would “walk out there and see it,” though the president was actually in the UK at the time. The installation still got attention throughout the day, especially from people passing by or stopping to film the thing towering over the sidewalk.
This statue isn’t the first to feature Trump on or near the National Mall, but it’s the first that appears to support him. In June, an eight-foot sculpture called “Dictator Approved” was placed on the strip. It showed a giant golden hand giving a thumbs-up while crushing the crown of the Statue of Liberty. That one was aimed at Trump’s military parade, which critics slammed earlier that same week.
Later in the same month, another piece popped up: a gold TV topped with a bald eagle playing a video loop of Trump dancing with Jeffrey Epstein. That came right after his administration reversed its position on releasing more of the Epstein Files, drawing backlash for what many saw as a sudden political U-turn.
This new Bitcoin statue, though, doesn’t try to criticize. It’s clearly pro-Trump, as the organizers literally said it’s meant to be a tribute to his pro-crypto stance, particularly at a time when traditional monetary policy is getting hit with skepticism.
Police didn’t interfere, and there were no reports of arrests. For seven hours, a 12-foot foam Trump holding a Bitcoin stood at the center of Washington’s most powerful real estate. And just like that, crypto made its market; big, gold, and standing in full view of Congress.
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