Former President Donald Trump outlined plans to promote the growth of cryptocurrencies and make the United States a crypto mining powerhouse during his keynote speech at the Nashville Bitcoin Conference 2024 on Saturday.
Trump announced that if elected, he would create a strategic bitcoin reserve in the United States. “It is the policy of my administration to retain 100 percent of all bitcoin that the United States government currently holds or acquires in the future… as a core part of a strategic national bitcoin reserve,” he said.
Currently, the US government owns more than 210,000 bitcoins that is confiscated through illegal activities such as online black markets The Silk Road and BitConnect Ponzi SchemeIts value at the time of writing is around $14 billion.
This move The rumor has been confirmed. spread by bitcoin enthusiasts in the hope that Trump’s endorsement of the reserve could boost the price of the cryptocurrency.
Trump also announced plans to appoint a bitcoin and cryptocurrency advisory council, tasked with “designing transparent regulatory guidance for the benefit of your industry” in the first 100 days of his next presidency. He said he wants the United States to become “the crypto capital of the world.”
Trump also pledged to create a framework to ensure the safe expansion of stablecoins, “allowing us to extend the dominance of the USD to other parts of the world,” and doubled his oath canceled any efforts to create a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) or digital dollar, saying “there will never be a CBDC while I am president of the United States.”
“I will always defend self-regulation,” he told a jubilant crowd. What probably got the biggest cheers was his promise to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler on day one.
“As soon as I am sworn in, the repression will stop and the weaponization of your industry will end,” he said, referring to Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as a sworn enemy of the industry.
He promised to introduce crypto-friendly regulations in the United States, so that workers would not have to “move to China.” Trump promised, once again, to release Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in Silk Road online black marketwhere people could buy items like illegal drugs before it was closed in 2013.
Crowds were anticipating the announcement of the bitcoin strategic reserve. On July 22, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis posted “Big things… this week” on X, two days before Fox Business reported She will “announce the law on strategic bitcoin reserves” at the conference.
Lummis appeared before the crowd shortly after Trump stepped out to announce a “gift to President Donald Trump”: a bitcoin reserve bill she had drafted.
“This is our Louisiana purchase moment,” she said, adding that the bill would take “the bitcoin that President Trump just mentioned and put it into the reserve—[and] That’s just the beginning.”
“Within five years, the United States will have collected 1 million bitcoins. Five percent of the world’s bitcoins will be held for a minimum of 20 years and can be used for one purpose only – reducing our debt,” she added.
