Donald Trump said he would end the “persecution” of the cryptocurrency industry, fire the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and free a prisoner widely regarded as a martyr.
In a live address to cryptocurrency enthusiasts at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday, the Republican candidate promised to end the Biden administration’s “crusade” against bitcoin.
“I pledge to the bitcoin community that on the day I am sworn in, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ anti-crypto crusade will end,” Trump said.
“On day one, I am firing Gary Gensler,” Trump declared to thunderous cheers from the approximately 5,000 people in the auditorium.
Crypto’s endorsement of Trump comes amid a difficult few years for the industry, which has faced a crackdown from the SEC. Crypto is “a space rife with fraud and manipulation,” Gensler said earlier this year.
The SEC has gone after numerous crypto companies and executives, helping put FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in jail, while also suing exchanges Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini, payments provider Ripple Labs and blockchain software company Consensys.
On Saturday, Trump promised to end “repression,” saying rules should be “written by people who love your industry, not by people who hate your industry.”
He also said he would instruct the Treasury Department to abandon the creation of a central bank digital currency and appoint an advisory council on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
This is a complete reversal of position from Trump, who has previously claimed that the value of cryptocurrencies is “based on nothing,” calling it “likely to be a disaster waiting to happen.” He has described bitcoin as “a fraud.”
But now both presidential candidates are courting the votes of the ‘crypto bros.’ Members of Kamala Harris’ campaign have met with people close to crypto companies in recent days in an effort to “reset” a relationship that has soured under the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, Trump is the first major party candidate to accept donations in cryptocurrency — and announced on Saturday that his campaign has raised $25 million in crypto donations. His running mate, JD Vance, at one point owned as much as $250,000 in bitcoin in a Coinbase account, according to his 2022 financial disclosure form.
Support for Trump was evident throughout the convention center. Trump supporters wearing “Make Money Great Again” branded clothing mingled with attendees wearing Satoshi T-shirts, orange cowboy hats, dresses and high heels. Trump addressed the audience on stage as “Nakamoto,” a reference to Satoshi, the pseudonymous bitcoin developer.
Some attendees wore T-shirts calling for the release of Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 for creating the online black market Silk Road, by voting for Trump. The GOP presidential candidate’s promise to commute his sentence drew the second-biggest cheer of the speech, after his call to fire Gensler.
“They are framing you as criminals but that happened to me too, because I said the election was rigged,” Trump said.
Earlier at the conference, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, who has given more than $1.4 million to pro-Trump Pacs this election cycle and will host a fundraiser for the former president next month, announced an initial $2 billion lending program that will fund bitcoin. He added that his firm owns “a bunch of bitcoin.”
Some attendees said Trump’s presence alone could change their voting decisions, hoping they would have an ally in the White House for the first time.
Investor and attendee Nick Smith said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 but would choose him today over Harris.
“I think they like his FU attitude toward authority,” Smith said of Trump fans.
Bitcoin prices have risen 10 percent to more than $68,000 since Trump survived the July 13 assassination attempt. “I believe bitcoin will go up to over $70 — and even higher when the president speaks,” said David McIntosh, president of the Trump ally Club for Growth.
“Trump is a businessman and an entrepreneur — and he sees the opportunity that bitcoin presents for the United States and for himself,” said Brandon Green, the conference’s chief of staff. “Over the last four years, you’ve seen a tremendous amount of hostility [Biden-Harris] management for industry.”
“Bitcoin is on the ballot,” Green later said on stage.
At a conference on Friday, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised to direct the U.S. Treasury Department to buy 4 million bitcoins, making transactions between the digital currency and dollars “unreportable” and “tax-free.”
Among the guest speakers was Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a massive amount of information about the US government’s surveillance activities. He told the crowd: “Vote, but don’t join a cult.”
North Carolina Democratic lawmaker Wiley Nickel has called on Harris to lead a party “reset” on cryptocurrency. Nickel, Ro Khanna and other Democrats in Congress sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee on Saturday urging the next administration to “choose a pro-innovation SEC chairman.” He received scattered applause — but was later booed when he read Trump’s past tweets criticizing cryptocurrency on stage.
“I want to say this as politely and respectfully as possible. Donald Trump has been president for four years. He has done nothing about this,” Nickel said. “I can tell you right now: He is a complete and utter piece of shit.”
Additional reporting by Nikou Asgari
