Every cycle has its ritual.

August limps into Labor Day.

Traders crawl back from beaches and weddings. Someone yells “Rektember!” and we all pretend we didn’t hear it.

Yes…

September is usually rough for risk assets—crypto included.

Yes…

September has been red for BTC in 8 of the last 12 years.

But that’s the headline.

The subhead: the last two Septembers were green.

2025’s macro isn’t the same beast…

ETFs exist, corporate treasuries are dollar-cost-averaging, and the first Fed cut is hanging in the air.

Also, there’s a new wild card in the midst…

The Trump-aligned World Liberty Financial token (WLFI) officially went live yesterday.

Some say it’s a big deal. Others say it’s a grift. A few say: Why not both?

Today, let’s travel into some speculative corners of what it all means…

And see why perhaps nothing is as (bearish as) it seems.

A New American Civil War?

First—this isn’t “Trump Token.”

That was a memecoin that ballooned to $75 billion on pure vibes.

WLFI is “different.”

(They promise.) 

The app behind it, World Liberty Financial, has an interesting pitch: It’s the Trump family’s attempt to build their own banking system after being debanked in 2021.

A political family launching its own rails may seem bizarre. Yet history suggests it’s pretty much par for the course.

Medieval nobles built their own financial rails when the royal mints threatened to shut them out.

The Medici, financial outcasts one day and Europe’s bankers the next, stamped the florin—one of the most trusted coins of its age.

Even when it looked like parties or states were in charge, families were usually at the core.

Lenin’s name anchored early Soviet money, Mao’s family became inseparable from the Renminbi, and Castro’s brothers controlled Cuba’s peso like a family estate.

During the English Civil War, both sides printed emergency “siege money” to fund their fight. And even the Confederacy printed its own notes after the Union cut the line.

So is WLFI—a political dynasty’s bid to spin up its own rails—really that outlandish? History’s brows remain fairly neutral.

But maybe, per usual, I’m reading too much into things. Maybe WLFI really is just another overhyped launch with terrible tokenomics.

But even then…

The historical lens makes it hard to tell the difference.

Whether it was dynasties striking coins, rebels printing siege money, or celebrities launching memecoins, the pattern lurking beneath the pattern repeats: grand promises on the surface, insiders pulling levers underneath.

Two Takeaways

WLFI is an entertaining subplot…

A political family minting its own monetary rails after being debanked—a soft civil war in money.

But here’s the thing…

This move from the Trump family says less about WLFI’s value and more about crypto’s fate.

Even the insiders, when threatened by legacy finance, reach for blockchain.

The other takeaway is more mundane, but much more useful:

September tends to test conviction. October tends to reward patience.

Keep a shopping list.

Let flows—not feelings—do the talking. Perhaps WLFI will be a useful barometer. I’ll be watching.

Stay tuned for more.