When Donald Trump announced days before Christmas that he was tapping a former college football player and failed congressional candidate to lead a White House “crypto council,” even crypto bros were confused.

“Who the heck is Bo Hines?” one Bitcoin booster posted on X.

As it turns out, the trust fund kid from North Carolina had connections in the crypto world.

Hines, 29, received support in one of his election campaigns from FTX campaign finance fraudster Ryan Salame.

More recently, a group overseen by his company teamed up with the makers of a Trump-themed meme coin called Restore the Republic that launched with a storm of scam accusations.

Hines will serve as executive director of the newly created Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, which is chaired by the far more prominent venture capitalist David Sacks.

Hines’s experience with the Trump-themed crypto venture raises questions about whether his appointment could signal looser restrictions on the fringe “meme coins” as the council sets out to deregulate more mainstream crypto projects backed by the likes of Sacks.

Until now, Hines’s ties to the crypto industry escaped scrutiny, in part because Trump announced his appointment in the days before Christmas. His relationship with Restore the Republic has not been previously reported.

Crypto Connections

Trump announced Hines’s selection on Truth Social on December 22 by lauding Hines’s educational background — Yale University, Wake Forest University law school — instead of his crypto chops.

In his home state of North Carolina, Hines may be best known for 2022 and 2024 runs for Congress, in two different districts, as well as a stint as a wide receiver at North Carolina State University before he transferred to Yale.

Despite Trump’s failure to tout them, however, Hines’s links to the crypto world were out in the open for anyone to notice.

As the CEO of the right-wing news organization Today Is America, which he ran since March 2023, provided a quote for an October 23 announcement about a partnership with a Trump-themed meme token called Restore the Republic.

Those were frantic, final days of a campaign that still seemed like it might come down to the wire. According to the press release, an organization called Students for Trump would partner with the meme coin organization to hold events, community forums, and voter outreach programs in swing states.

Students for Trump and Today Is America are deeply intertwined. The student group is overseen by Today In America, according to a LinkedIn posting by a former top official at the company and a separate post on a crypto news clearinghouse about the Restore the Republic coin. And the student group’s homepage is a vertical of the Today Is America website. According to its Instagram bio, Students for Trump is “powered” by Today Is America.

In the announcement of the Restore the Republic........

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