Donald Trump is an unlikely ally of cryptocurrencies. The power of bitcoin, embodied in Satoshi Nakamoto’s coin founding documentis that it frees participants from murky assessments of trust, relying instead on the basis of evidence.
Bitcoin is the truth. That’s why it was cosmically strange to hear attendees at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville last week enthusiastically praising a former president who, on the one hand, carefully compiled accountlied 390,573 times in his single term. Believers in a mathematically uncontestable blockchain were in a state of hosanna as Donald Trump Delivered a speech It was full of falsehoods, fabrications and fantasies. They rejoiced when he took credit for the meteoric rise in the value of bitcoin during his administration, even though they surely knew that until recently he had trashed the idea of cryptocurrency.
“Bitcoin, it seems like a scam,” he said. said in 2021“I don’t like it because it’s another currency that competes against the dollar.” Trump is now the darling of the crypto world, even if no one believes he has any idea how tokens work, or even what they are. “Stablecoins … stablecoins,” Trump said at one point, correcting himself while probably looking at the teleprompter, then paused. “Do you know what a stablecoin is? Does anyone?”
Trump clearly doesn’t. That didn’t stop him from making promises that only someone who doesn’t understand bitcoin well, both technically and philosophically, would make. He compared bitcoin to the steel industry of a century ago, a mind-boggling disparity between an icon of the industrial revolution and a vanguard movement of the digital world. He then promised to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world.”
This sentiment, as conference attendees will surely know, changes the basic premise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain: a sovereign system that operates without regard to the interests of any nation. To quote cryptocurrency theorist Erik Cason:“Bitcoin offers a radical new hope by which man can rescue himself from the cage that is every nation-state today.” Trump’s promise that the United States would dominate Bitcoin is a slap in the face to Satoshi.
One of the proposals Trump has floated is a bitcoin reserve in which the United States would hold and store billions of dollars worth of tokens, a plan experts consider to be of dubious value to taxpayers but which could increase the value of the currency for the enrichment of the people of Nashville. Again, manipulation by a government superpower is anathema to the values of the blockchain revolution. Another promise Trump made was to pardon Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricht, who is currently serving a life sentence. In federal prison for running a massive cryptocurrency-powered operation in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering. That’s how hard-line crime-fighting goes.
Despite the oddity, the alliance between Trump and the bitcoin brethren seems almost predestined. The crypto world chafes at government regulation and sees in Donald Trump an opportunity to lighten the state touch, perhaps to the level of a friendly tickle. Trump has encouraged that thinking by meeting with key funders and investors and adopting their views. As if cementing a thinly disguised transaction, crypto world players are funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign coffers. So it’s not surprising that Trump promised at the Nashville conference that he would put an end to “left-wing fascists and totalitarians bent on crushing crypto.” He was enthusiastically applauded for that sentiment. Trump also indicated that Kamala Harris is among those “fascists.” “By the way, she’s against crypto,” he said. “She’s very much against it.” (In fact, Harris has not set her policy and has been Reaching out to cryptocurrency companies.) The cheers were loudest when Trump said he would fire Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (which has been policing risky crypto schemes) on his first day back in office.
Legitimate question: Does the current White House “hate crypto,” as the industry and Trump seem to believe? I did some digging and found that in the early days of the administration, cryptocurrency policy (which was admittedly a relatively low priority during a pandemic) was in play, with some officials viewing it as a scam technology. Ultimately, however, the administration set a course that attempted to maintain a balance between encouraging innovation in the field and enforcing existing securities law.