John Bollinger, creator of Bollinger Bands, argued in a sharply worded X post on April 21 that Bitcoin, XRP and the broader cryptocurrency market need a break from what he believes is Washington’s withdrawal of capital from the sector. Bollinger didn’t cite the data set or cite a specific policy move, but his reference to the “current administration” hit a market already primed to read it as an attack on President Donald Trump’s orbit and his related crypto ventures.

“I can’t help but wonder if the current administration is done sucking capital out of the crypto space. Perhaps one of you will be able to figure out how much capital it has removed from the crypto space and estimate the impact.” He then in addition the phrase that fueled the post: “It’s nice to be back at work!” Bollinger tagged BTC, ETH, LTC and XRP, making it clear that he was talking about market-wide conditions and not a single trade or narrative pocket.

The story behind Bollinger’s work on Bitcoin, XRP and cryptocurrencies

Bollinger’s complaint, read in context, is that the cryptocurrency has spent too much time functioning as a political mining machine and too little time trading on its own fundamentals. This is the conclusion of his post, not a quantifiable claim by Bollinger himself, but it fits a period in which Trump-related projects were absorbing a huge amount of attention, providing liquidity and generating fees.

The most prominent example was the TRUMP meme coin. The entities behind the token racked up nearly $100 million in trading fees less than two weeks after launch, while tens of thousands of smaller traders lost money. 80% of the token supply belonged to CIC Digital, a Trump affiliate, and another related entity, meaning much of the economy was reliant on insiders from the start.

Then there’s World Liberty Financial, a Trump family-backed crypto venture that has become a much larger and more enduring capital sink. World Liberty raised over $550 million through the sale of WLFI governance tokens, the Trump family took a 60% stake in the business and the rights to 75% of net revenues from token sales and 60% of operating revenues, and that only about 5% of the funds raised were left to build the platform itself.
The up-to-date token sale still sends 75% of the proceeds to the Trump family, even though the project included tighter lockups for early investors and faces a up-to-date lawsuit from TRON founder Justin Sun.

This does not prove that the money flowing into Trump-related projects is money directly taken from Bitcoin or XRP on a one-to-one basis. However, it supports Bollinger’s broader market argument: in a cycle where capital is finite, politically branded tokens, insider token sales and high-price speculative fees could divert risk appetite away from liquid mainstream companies and the business of trading them.

If this momentum weakens, Bollinger’s call for “relief” could resonate most with investors who believe that Bitcoin and XRP have spent the last year competing not only with macro headwinds but also with the administration’s own fiscal coffers.

At the time of publication, XRP was trading at $1.45.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com