Nashville
CNN
–
For a while, Donald Trump would have made an unlikely headline at a cryptocurrency confab.
As president, Trump declared bitcoin “not money” and criticized it as “very volatile and based on air.” He warned that crypto assets helped facilitate illegal underground markets.
“We only have one real currency in the US, and it’s stronger than ever,” Trump tweeted in 2019. “It’s called the United States dollar!”
But on Saturday, Trump addressed the cryptocurrency industry’s largest annual gathering here in Nashville not as a cynic, but as one of its most prominent supporters — the culmination of a turnaround on the issue during the latest offering of the former president in the White House.
Despite cryptocurrency’s troubling recent history and his past reservations, Trump has fully embraced the hype and hopes of the nascent industry. His campaign now accepts bitcoin donations — and has raised about $4 million, a source with knowledge of his fundraising said. He has attacked the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate the industry as a “war on crypto” without acknowledging the massive fraud schemes that have destroyed public confidence in digital currencies. And he has vowed as president to make it easier for cryptocurrency mining companies to operate in the United States.
“Otherwise, other countries will have it,” Trump said earlier this month in Wisconsin.
The industry, on the other hand, has embraced Trump. Its leaders and investors have donated millions of dollars to his campaign and aligned political committees. They are cheerleaders for his candidacy to their large online audience and provided him with a platform on Saturday to speak directly to the anticipated 20,000 attendees at this year’s Bitcoin Conference.
“Many of these people consider themselves issue voters,” said technology writer Jacob Silverman, author of the best-selling Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud. “If Trump or anyone else says they’re pro-bitcoin, that matters to them.”
Trump made several cryptocurrency-friendly policy commitments on Saturday, including pledging to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler and creating a “national strategic bitcoin stockpile,” all part of his campaign pledge. to encourage the growth of industry in the US.
“If crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted and manufactured in the USA,” Trump said at the convention, ahead of a more traditional campaign event in St. Cloud, Minnesota, later in the day.
Since Trump voiced his opposition to bitcoin in 2019, the volatile industry has only faced more turbulence, most notably the arrest, trial and imprisonment of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Once the face of a company that counted comedian Larry David and superstar quarterback Tom Brady among its celebrity endorsers, Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March to 25 years in prison for running a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme through his companies.
The Trump campaign would not say what prompted the former president’s 180-degree turn on bitcoin. Nor has Trump addressed one of the central criticisms of digital currencies: their lack of a practical, real use other than a highly speculative investment.
Trump campaign spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement to CNN that “cryptoinnovators and others in the technology sector are under attack” from Democrats, while the former president was “willing to encourage American leadership in this and other technologies in development”.
Republican allies have joined Trump in his move toward bitcoin. Speaking at the conference on Friday, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott argued that the former president understands attendees’ concerns about financial freedom — a common refrain in the crypto community.
“We want people, whether they want their dollars or they want their digital assets, we want them to be in charge of making their own decisions,” Scott said.
Industry leaders have been courting Trump for months and have been educating his campaign on their policy agenda and the opportunity to sway voters on the topic, David Bailey, CEO of the bitcoin-focused media company, said in a recent interview. , BTC Inc.
Their point, Bailey admitted, involved “the amount of industry support it can get” by embracing cryptocurrency. Their conversations included a meeting earlier this summer with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“Everything accelerated rapidly at that point,” said Bailey, whose company hosts the annual conference where Trump spoke on Saturday.
Indeed, support for Trump quickly followed. Billionaire crypto tycoons Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss each pledged to donate $1 million worth of bitcoins to the Trump campaign. The Federal Election Commission has allowed political committees to receive bitcoin as contributions since 2014, the value of which is determined by the price at the time the contribution is received.
Cryptocurrency was also a topic of discussion during a recent fundraiser through Silicon Valley, which Trump’s new running mate, Sen. JD Vance, helped arrange. Billionaire tech entrepreneur David Sacks, a prominent cryptocurrency champion, hosted one of the fundraisers at his home.
“One of the things I think we heard a lot at that dinner was just the difficulty that people in business are having under this Biden administration,” Sacks said on a recent episode of the “All-In Podcast,” which he co-hosts. . “You have the crypto guys who just want a framework. They just want the government to tell them how to act, and they can’t get that.”
Industry leaders and champions have become increasingly political, helping fund super PACs that have overwhelmingly supported Republicans over Democrats.
“Time for the crypto army to send a message to Washington,” wrote Tyler Winklevoss in a lengthy social media post endorsing Trump. “This attack on us is political suicide.”
Eric Soufer, a political adviser to major crypto companies, said the people devoted to cryptocurrencies, who left power after the Bankman-Fried episode, “are looking for political validation after years in the wilderness.”
“They believe that now is their moment, and it’s hard to resist someone who is telling them everything they want to hear,” Soufer said.
The cryptocurrency industry has experienced a resurgence since the fall of FTX. After cratering in 2022, the price of bitcoin has recovered and hit an all-time high in June. The excitement surrounding this year’s event in Nashville was palpable inside the Music City Center. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also spoke at the conference on Friday.
However, many Americans have expressed concern about cryptocurrency even as more people become aware of it. A 2023 Pew Research study found that nearly 9 in 10 adults had heard of cryptocurrencies, and 75% of those people did not believe it was safe or reliable.
But Trump’s friendship with crypto voters is consistent with other efforts to find new support in unconventional places. Earlier this year, Trump reached out to members of the Libertarian Party at their annual convention, where he pledged to “support the right to self-care for the nation’s 50 million crypto holders.” There is considerable overlap between Libertarians and the crypto community.
Trump supporters were not hard to find inside the Bitcoin Conference. John Fischer, a 61-year-old from Atlanta, has personally invested in cryptocurrency since 2021. He voted for Trump in 2020 and plans to do so again.
However, he was clear about Trump’s attempts to judge the conference participants.
“Every politician is going to stand for something if they’re going to get votes,” Fischer said.
Luke Broyles, a 25-year-old Michigander who works in the crypto industry, was also unsure about Trump’s latest demands, despite his recent rhetoric.
“I think there’s a little bit of skepticism that people have with bitcoin,” Broyles said. “I think it is reasonable. At the end of the day, people are into bitcoin because they don’t trust politicians.”
This news and headline has been updated with additional developments.