A banner 2024 whet the appetites of banks and crypto bros. Now the largest companies are salivating over Trump’s economic policies.

The super-rich are ecstatic. Bitcoin’s value surged past $100,000 last year, and bankers were “dancing in the streets” after Donald Trump’s victory in November. Wall Street is already licking its chops over forecasts for stock gains in 2025.

Meanwhile, a stark year-end report showed an 18 percent jump in homelessness. And small business owners are grappling with uncertainty over Trump’s threats to impose tariffs and deport immigrants.

It’s the tale of a widening class divide: one that pits the super-rich against everyone else, even the normal-rich. The Trump economy could see a chasm between the big businesses poised to exploit next year’s changes and the small fish left scrambling.

Take Trump’s promised tariff war. Under the new round of tariffs, economists warned, only the biggest businesses — those with the connections to flatter Trump and the resources to hire lobbyists — will be the big winners.

“There will be a rush for businesses to try to get exemptions from these tariffs. We saw this all over the place in the first Trump administration,” said Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “The businesses that are going to be most adept at that are large businesses with teams of lawyers.”

Banks and Bitcoin

Companies affected by tariffs aren’t the only ones looking to expand their gains amid the upcoming Trump term.

Some of the most exuberant responses to the election may be the financiers who foresee looser regulations under Trump and the crypto enthusiasts who think Trump may take a wrecking ball to their industry’s rules.

Days after Trump’s win, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that bankers were “dancing in the streets,” no matter who they had voted for.

Wall Street is gaga about 2025. After two consecutive years of greater than 20 percent gains, analysts expect 10 percent or more rises in leading stock indexes next year as well.

There may be no group of business tycoons more excited than those in the crypto world, who bet big on the 2024 elections and have received a warm embrace from Trump, despite his earlier view of cryptocurrency as a “scam.”

Trump and his allies in Congress have promised to unleash crypto by doing away with regulations and enforcement, to the concern of watchdogs who worry that it could usher in a financial crash. With the entire industry basking in optimism since Trump’s win, the most well-known digital asset, Bitcoin, has gone on a huge run, hitting record highs.