Donald Trump is courting the votes of cryptocurrency investors by promising to make the US a ‘Bitcoin superpower’ with far less regulation.
The former president even offered them a high-profile government scalp as he gave a speech to the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on Saturday.
‘On day one I will fire Gary Gensler,’ he told the crowd, speaking of the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman.
Trump received so much applause from the crowd that he repeated his pledge, adding, ‘I didn’t know he was that unpopular’.
Gensler would be replaced with someone friendly to crypto investors, and he would create a crypto advisory council to design regulatory guidance.
The Bitcoin price crashed to less than $67,000 as soon as Trump started speaking, but rallied to $69,000 over the next hour when investors heard his pro-crypto speech.
Trump made numerous promises to make the US the world’s ‘crypto capital’, in contrast with President Joe Biden’s efforts to strongly regulate it.
‘I pledge to the Bitcoin community, the day I take the oath of office, Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’s anti-crypto crusade will be over. It will end. It will be done,’ he said.
‘The moment I’m sworn in, the persecution stops and the weaponization ends against your industry.’
He warned that if Vice President Harris won ‘every one of you will be gone. They will be vicious. They will be ruthless. They will do things that you wouldn’t believe.’.
Trump’s embracing of cryptocurrency is a sharp turn from just three years ago when he railed against it, and even top crypto boosters admit the former president is ‘pandering’ to them to win votes.
‘Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,’ Trump said in 2021, calling it ‘another currency competing against the dollar’.
‘I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,’ he said in 2019, linking it to drug sales and criminals.
‘We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever. It is called the United States Dollar!’
But wealthy donors, and Trump’s desire to be president again no matter, what fueled a road to Damascus conversion he hopes will give him an edge.
In Nashville, he tried to sell himself as ‘the crypto president’ in contrast to Harris, who allegedly privately told a donor ‘Bitcoin is money for criminals’.
‘This is the steel industry of 100 years ago,’ Trump said.
‘If we don’t do it, China and others are going to be doing it. Let’s do it right. If crypto is going to define the future, I want to be mined, minted, and made in the USA.
‘It’s not going to be made anywhere else. And if bitcoin is going to the moon, as we say… I want America to be the nation that leads the way, and that’s what’s going to happen. So you’re going to be very happy with me.’
Trump outlined his plan to create a framework for the expansion of stable coins, and promised to keep all the crypto the US Government owned.
He would then expand those holdings to create a ‘strategic national Bitcoin stockpile’.
Trump would also end Treasury Department efforts to create a central bank digital currency, which would compete with Bitcoin and others.
‘There will never be a CBDC while I’m president of the United States,’ he said.
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