23.11.2025
The Walking Chaos II
The Naive Plan
Klaudia Grote

At first glance, the secret plan of Trump - The Walking Chaos - appears economically naive. The core idea is to elevate USD1, the stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, into a new global reserve currency. Trump draws on historical episodes that he only partially understands: Roosevelt’s Gold Reserve Act, which outlawed private gold ownership, and Nixon’s decoupling of the dollar from the gold standard, which produced the so-called Nixon Shock. In his imagination, these episodes merge into a blueprint for radical monetary reinvention, stripped of their historical complexity. For him, “World Liberty Financial (WLF)” signifies one thing above all: financial liberation for himself.

In this scenario, the plan rests on a deceptively simple premise: USD1 as a parallel currency backed by US dollars and especially by US Treasuries. The benefit for the private operator family is obvious: the interest generated by the Treasury holdings does not return to the public but flows into private wealth structures of the Trump and Witkoff Families. A significant portion of seigniorage based prosperity is thus shifted out of democratic control and into private hands. In political terms, this constitutes a transformation of historic scale.

To anchor USD1 globally, however, Trump needs the cooperation of the major oil and energy producing nations. With the expiration of the Petrodollar arrangement in 2024, he sees an opportunity to replace the system with a Petro-USD1. The geopolitical axis runs through the Middle East, South America, and Eastern Europe.

For this reason, he courts Russia in this scenario not out of strategic wisdom but out of tactical self-deception: he believes he can pull Russia out of China’s orbit and absorb it into a USD1 based energy order. In his simplistic logic, the equation is clear: with Russia, China stays strong; without Russia, China weakens. In this fiction, he is willing to sacrifice Ukraine to achieve this fantasy.

Countries that resist the project come under pressure. Europe plays only a marginal role in the Walking Chaos’s design. Venezuela, in his mind, can be bent through military signaling. And Russia appears trapped in structural weakness, threatened both by internal fragmentation and by the fear that it could not defend Siberia against China.

In his mind, bringing Russia into his currency architecture would allow him to wipe away America’s debt and revive the vanished age of U.S. hegemony. For the Walking Chaos, “making America great again” means restoring the world of the last eighty years. But that world has already slipped into history, leaving only the illusion that it can be rebuilt by force of will.

In reality, Trump commands significant Bitcoin and gold reserves, whose partial liquidation influences market movements. A rise in USD1’s market capitalization in early October, paired with falling Bitcoin and gold prices, appears as a deliberate signal. The first operational step is to test USD1 as a means of payment in the public sector.

In a second phase, he dreams of “backing” USD1 with large quantities of state controlled Bitcoin and, by analogy to Roosevelt, of introducing a Bitcoin Reserve Act: banning private Bitcoin ownership, enforcing state confiscation, fixing an artificial price, and channeling massive wealth into government hands. Later, again in analogy to Nixon, he would decouple USD1 from Bitcoin and issue the currency at will. In this fictional universe, he speaks of Liberation Day and a Big Beautiful Bill and frames the entire digital transition not as policy but as a revelation of his own greatness.

But the naive plan is only half of the story. The other half is psychological: it concerns the mindset of those who enable him to play this dangerous game.

Many in his orbit do not believe in his genius because it is evident, but because they need to believe in it. They rely on his greatness to feel greater themselves. Political psychology calls this a form of self projection. They invest brilliance into him so that some of it reflects onto them. Critiquing him would mean dismantling their own illusions, and that is intolerable.

The second, even more dangerous mechanism is the structural incompetence of his inner circle. Many of those around him would be powerless without him. They do not possess the knowledge that complex governance requires. They are not professional state actors, not strategic thinkers, not experts. Not only that, but they cling to him because, without him, they would be insignificant. Their dependence makes them blind and malleable. They cannot restrain him because they lack the capacity to recognize or evaluate risks. This creates an echo chamber in which errors harden into convictions and misconceptions calcify into dogma.

Within such an atmosphere, the naive plan appears plausible. Some argue: “He has gotten away with everything so far.” This psychological mechanism shifts the boundaries of the imaginable. When previous violations went unpunished, the illusion of total impunity takes root – and this illusion is contagious.

The force of the plan does not lie in economic rationality but in political image making:

· a new digital currency promising prosperity,

· a national and global liberation from debt,

· a triumphant return to an imagined past of greatness through monetary spectacle.

The plan follows a psychological logic, not a macroeconomic one. The Walking Chaos underestimates the complexity of global financial systems and overestimates his ability to overwrite structures through willpower and performance. He confuses breaking rules with creating rules.

He also exploits scandals and distractions, such as the Epstein files. For a leader like the Walking Trump Chaos, revelations pose no danger; they represent material. They allow him to stage strength, stigmatize opponents, mobilize followers, and redirect public attention.

Ultimately, the danger of the naive plan does not lie in its economic plausibility, but in the number of people willing to believe in its political feasibility. Opportunistic elites like MBS or Putin join not because they trust the system but because they anticipate quick rewards: access to seized assets, privileged stakes in new financial vehicles, or the elimination of rivals.

Naive from a systemic perspective, the plan underestimates counterforces, ignores feedback loops, and misreads the fragile nature of trust. It is dangerous because it feeds on human susceptibility: on greed, grievance, fantasies of revenge, and the longing for simple solutions to complex crises.