Former President Donald Trump made a series of cryptocurrency-friendly policy commitments during remarks at a bitcoin convention Saturday, including promising to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler and creating a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile.”
Trump said if reelected he would redirect bitcoin seized by the US Department of Justice into what he called “a permanent national asset to benefit all Americans,” one of a number of promises he made to cryptocurrency investors at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference in Nashville.
Trump repeated the promise to fire the SEC chair “on Day 1,” earning a standing ovation, to which the former president quipped: “I didn’t know he was that unpopular.”
Trump also promised to “immediately” establish a “bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council,” which he said would provide “transparent regulatory guidance” for the cryptocurrency sector.
The Republican nominee also warned that bitcoin investors in the audience will be “crushed” if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected.
Some background: For a time, Trump would have made for an unlikely headliner at a cryptocurrency confab. As president, he declared bitcoin “not money” and criticized it as “highly volatile and based on thin air.”
“We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever,” Trump wrote on Twitter in 2019. “It is called the United States Dollar!”
But Saturday marked the culmination of a total reversal on the issue during the former president’s latest White House bid. Despite cryptocurrency’s troubling recent history and his own past reservations, Trump has fully embraced the hype and hopes of the nascent industry. His campaign now accepts bitcoin donations — and has collected about $4 million worth, a source with knowledge of his fundraising said.