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Trump’s Bitcoin Conference Speech Will Mark a Pivotal Moment for Cryptocurrencies
Crypto is now on the campaign trail in an official capacity, extending beyond the disposable lines to please whatever voting demographic and fundraising PAC will be pleased that day. The shred of legitimacy the industry has been begging for since its inception has arrived, embodied in an orange man at an orange coin conference.
I’m no political strategist, but I’ve always found it strange when presidential candidates spend their time campaigning in states they’re not in any danger of losing. Trump, or any Republican candidate, will not lose Tennessee in the 2024 presidential election. (Let’s face it, folks: Joe Biden is no Bill Clinton.) And yet, Trump stops by a Bitcoin conference in the Volunteer State during the immensely busy campaign season, the same way a candidate makes campaign speeches in airplane hangars for the military vote and in front of factories for blue-collar Americans, with Teamsters in tow, for the union vote.
Trump’s Nashville appearance has a clear message: the content of the conference is more important than the venue. There are enough single-issue cryptocurrency voters out there to make a difference for Trump.
(At least, quite a bit considering the potential donations from cryptocurrency rich people: a Trump fundraiser (The event costs more than $800,000 per ticket.)
Republicans have been fighting (against… no one, except maybe independents or libertarians) to be seen as the pro-crypto party in the United States. One example is the preventive Official anti-CBDC statements by people like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (perhaps to appear anti-China and pro-capitalism). Another is the vote effort in the House of Representatives to overturn President Biden’s veto of a pro-crypto resolution that falls neatly along party lines (except for one Republican dissident and some bipartisan support from 21 Democrats).
It seems to me that in this election cycle, cryptocurrencies are the feather in the cap for the individual liberty theme that GOP voters love, so much so that Trump has completely backtracked on his anti-crypto rhetoric. In 2019, Trump tweeted: “I’m not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencieswhich are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on nothing. Unregulated cryptocurrencies can facilitate illicit behavior, including drug trafficking and other illegal activities….” Then in 2021 he stated Bitcoin is a scam against the dollar” during an interview with Fox Business.
It’s clear that there are votes to be won and Trump wants them.
We have a good dose of reality ahead of us. Let’s say there are 50 million cryptocurrency holders, as Coinbase suggests. They are all Truly single-issue voters?
But you don’t even need that to win.
You are right. I argue that the 2024 US presidential election will be decided by about 100,000 votes (not the popular vote, of course, I mean net votes in swing states) and so if a candidate is to win, he needs as many votes as possible in high-risk areas. And since President Biden seems to have no interest in dealing with or courting the crypto vote (a significant misstep, in my opinion, since appearing pro-crypto is not enough to convince people worn out a candidate, provided the positioning is correct), every single-issue voter who votes for cryptocurrencies is likely to vote for Trump and try to influence those around them to also vote for Trump.
In this way, it makes perfect sense that the Republican Party believes that cryptocurrency is an area worth getting some of those critical votes.
Also, the conference is a spectacle that people travel to Tennessee for. Trump won’t be speaking to Tennessee voters, he’ll be speaking to a geographically diverse (dare I say… decentralized?) cross-section of American voters (that is, if you can convince Bitcoiners to vote…).
It just makes too much sense. Cryptocurrencies are clearly now established in the mainstream. And while cryptocurrencies are weird, American politics have been weird too. And the weirdness will continue: it will be weird to have Secret Service agents scattered around the Bitcoin conference, it will be weird that the mainstream media (and not just their financial or tech reporters) will be there to cover the proceedings, and it will be weird when President Trump says again that he wants all remaining Bitcoin to be Made in America.
I guess when things get bad, weirdos turn pro.
Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.
UPDATE (July 15, 2024, 5:02 PM UTC): Adds fundraising details.