President Donald Trump has reportedly blackballed a lobbying firm that he thinks manipulated him into posting on social media about XRP.

In early March, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that he directed the Presidential Working Group on Digital Asset Markets “to move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOL, and ADA.”

Politico, citing “two people familiar with the incident,” reports that Trump was goaded into making the post by an employee of the lobbying firm Ballard Partners. The unnamed employee reportedly “buttonholed” Trump at Mar-a-Lago and encouraged him multiple times to publish the post, even providing him with the text of a message she thought the president should write.

After Trump published the post, he realized Ripple, the firm behind the payments coin XRP, was also a Ballard client. Ripple maintains that the crypto asset is an independent token but owns 46 billion XRP out of the coin’s 100 billion max supply, according to CoinMarketCap.

Trump was “furious” and “felt like he’d been used,” according to Politicio’s sources. The president reportedly blackballed the head of the firm, Brian Ballard, explicitly saying “he is not welcome in anything anymore.”

Politico, citing three anonymous sources, also reports that David Sacks, the White House’s Crypto Czar, was “furious” about the Crypto Strategic Reserve post on Truth Social and complained to Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

Trump later followed up the initial Truth Social post with another message praising the top two crypto assets.

“And, obviously, BTC and ETH, as other valuable Cryptocurrencies, will be the heart of the Reserve. I also love Bitcoin and Ethereum!”

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Author: Conor Devitt

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