Author: Oliver, Mars Finance

On July 5, 2025, Elon Musk dropped a bombshell on social media, announcing the establishment of the "American Party." This is not just another political play by a billionaire on a whim, but a carefully calculated radical experiment. The immediate trigger was his complete break with former President Trump over a massive spending bill that would lead to an additional $3.3 trillion deficit. However, the true goal of this movement may not be to win a traditional election, but to use the logic of tech elites and the tools of the crypto world to "fork" the entrenched democratic process in the U.S.—to replicate its foundation and then iterate and evolve in a new direction, reshaping the way power operates.

Break: The Catalyst Forged in Fiscal Fire

The alliance between Musk and Trump was once the most eye-catching political landscape after the 2024 election. Musk not only invested heavily but also personally joined the cabinet, heading the newly established "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), vowing to cut trillions from federal spending. However, this honeymoon period abruptly ended with the introduction of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (OBBBA).

The scale of this bill is unprecedented, with its core being the permanent extension of Trump's tax cuts while significantly increasing defense and border security spending and cutting social welfare. According to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will add nearly $3.3 trillion to the U.S. deficit over the next decade. This figure became an insurmountable red line for Musk. He denounced the bill as "utter madness and destruction," a fast track to "debt slavery," and publicly promised that if the bill passed, "the American Party would be established the next day."

Musk's anger stemmed from a profound sense of betrayal. The DOGE department he led had a core mission of fiscal tightening and government slimming, representing the tech libertarian ideals of "small government, high efficiency, hard currency." In his view, the passage of OBBBA was a blatant denial of this mission. This conflict was not merely a policy disagreement but a direct clash of worldviews: one side represented Trump's political logic of consolidating populist support through massive fiscal spending; the other embodied Musk's technocratic approach, which adheres to first principles and pursues systemic efficiency and fiscal sustainability. When Trump openly threatened to let DOGE "go back and devour Musk," the once-alliance shattered, making the birth of the "American Party" inevitable.

Strategy: The Asymmetric Game of "Kingmaker"

When announcing the establishment of the "American Party," Musk did not propose a grand blueprint aimed at winning the national election. Instead, he unveiled an unusual and highly focused strategy: the initial goal was to target "2 to 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts" in the 2026 midterm elections. The core of this strategy is not to become the majority party but to become the "critical minority" in a closely contested Congress, thereby playing the role of "kingmaker."

Musk revealed his strategic thinking with a clever historical analogy: "We will adopt a variant of the tactics used by Theban general Epaminondas to shatter the Spartan invincibility myth at the Battle of Leuctra, to break the 'uniparty' system: concentrating our forces at a precise location on the battlefield." In the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, Epaminondas did not distribute his forces evenly but concentrated his main force on the left flank, achieving an overwhelming local advantage to decisively defeat Sparta's elite.

Musk's strategy is a modern political application of this ancient wisdom. He understands that in the current polarized American political landscape, where the two parties have a very narrow margin in Congress, a third-party faction with even just a few seats but unified action can have decisive influence in key votes on legislation. This is a highly capital-efficient political investment, aiming to achieve maximum policy influence with minimal cost, forcing both parties to make concessions on core issues like fiscal discipline and deregulation. It is a typical asymmetric warfare strategy, designed to disrupt and reshape the entire political market with minimal input.

Foundation: Mobilizing the Invisible "Crypto Constituency"

Any political movement requires a base, and Musk's "American Party" seems to have found a ready-made, well-funded, and ideologically aligned group: the cryptocurrency industry and its supporters. This circle, once on the fringes of mainstream politics, is now rising as a political force that cannot be ignored.

The 2024 election cycle witnessed the industry's astonishing political donation power. Super Political Action Committees (Super PACs) funded by crypto giants like Coinbase and Ripple, such as Fairshake, have invested over $119 million to influence elections, with their supported candidates showing a high success rate in primaries, demonstrating their precise and powerful political operational capabilities. This strong capital force provides a solid financial foundation for new forces like the "American Party."

In addition to robust capital, a pro-crypto political ecosystem has quietly taken shape across multiple states in the U.S. From Arizona to Ohio to Texas, several key states have passed or are considering bills that allow digital assets like Bitcoin to be included in government reserves or public pension funds. This political map reveals a clear trend: in the key battleground states that determine control of Congress, there exists a voter base that is friendly to cryptocurrencies.

On a deeper level, Musk's repeated use of the term "uniparty" resonates strongly with the core beliefs of the crypto community. The birth of Bitcoin itself is a rebellion against the "centralized uniparty" of traditional finance (TradFi) and government central banks. When Musk uses the same language to describe the establishment in Washington, he cleverly links dissatisfaction with the political status quo to the crypto world's inherent critique of centralized power. This transforms the "American Party" from merely a political party into an extension of a decentralized revolution in the political realm, turning potential supporters from ordinary voters into staunch ideological allies.

Means: From Dogecoin Legion to PolitiFi

If capital and voter base are the fuel for the "American Party," then its mobilization and operational methods could completely overturn traditional campaign models. Musk's interaction with the Dogecoin community has already previewed a new political mobilization manual based on internet culture and decentralized networks. Through memes and personal charisma, he has transformed a loose online network into a highly effective force.

Today, this model has evolved into "PolitiFi"—meme coins created around political figures or events. Imagine the "American Party" issuing an official token, where supporters' personal wealth is directly tied to the party's reputation and success. This mechanism creates a powerful positive feedback loop: to increase the value of the tokens they hold, supporters will spontaneously become the most enthusiastic missionaries and advocates. They will create memes, promote the party's ideals on social media, and recruit new members, as each successful promotion could directly translate into an increase in their own wealth. This effectively gamifies political participation, transforming passive supporters into active, economically motivated stakeholders, with mobilization efficiency and stickiness that traditional parties cannot match.

Conclusion: A New Branch of Democracy

Elon Musk's "American Party" is far from a simple political disruptor. It is a singularity where powerful forces converge: a profound ideological struggle, a lean "kingmaker" strategy, a fully mobilized cryptocurrency voter base, and a disruptive campaign mobilization manual.

Ultimately, all of this points to a grander and more radical vision: to "protocolize" the party itself, building a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) driven by code and consensus. This means that core functions such as party platform formulation, candidate nomination, and fund management can all be conducted in a publicly transparent, tamper-proof blockchain environment. This is the most thorough technical realization of Musk's promise to "return power to the people."

A political DAO can integrate various innovative governance mechanisms advocated by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and others:

• Liquid Democracy: Members can vote directly on issues they care about while delegating voting rights on unfamiliar areas to trusted experts.
• Quadratic Voting: This mechanism encourages people to allocate votes to the issues they care about most, resulting in decisions that are more nuanced and reflective of collective preferences than simple majority rule.
• Reputation-Based Governance: Voting rights are derived not from wealth but from contributions to the community, rewarding merit rather than capital.

By mixing these models, a DAO party can construct a highly flexible, transparent, and censorship-resistant governance framework, fundamentally addressing the dilemma of modern party decision-making being monopolized by a few elites and big donors.

This "forked democracy" experiment will channel the disruptive spirit of Silicon Valley, the decentralized ideals of the crypto world, and the vast capital they can mobilize into the political arena in unprecedented ways. However, this prospect also brings complex and profound challenges. On one hand, it may lead to unprecedented democratic innovation; on the other hand, it raises concerns about a new form of "technocratic elite politics." When voting rights can be bought and market sentiment can directly influence political direction, the stability and fairness of democracy will face new tests.

Regardless of success or failure, this movement has placed a sharp question before the world: when politics itself can be encoded, tokenized, and "forked," where will the democracy we know head? This struggle that began in the corridors of power in Washington may ultimately write a new chapter for governance models in the 21st century on the distributed ledger of blockchain.

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