Former president Donald Trump reiterated his position that he hopes to make the U.S. “the world capital for crypto and bitcoin” in a speech on his economic policy on Thursday, although he didn’t offer any further details, nor did he even mention crypto again in his hourlong remarks.
“Instead of attacking industries of the future, we will embrace them, including making America the world capital for crypto and bitcoin,” Trump said in his speech at the Economic Club of New York. He prefaced those comments by saying that he would cut regulations broadly across several industries, pledging to cut 10 regulations for every one new regulation he enacts.
Ron Hammond, Director of Government Regulations at the Blockchain Association, a trade group, said he was encouraged that Trump mentioned crypto at all in his speech.
“Crypto even getting a small shoutout shows that it’s relevant,” Hammond said. “Even if it’s not a top 5 or top 10 issue, it’s arguably a top 20 issue.”
Hammond added that he didn’t expect the Trump campaign to issue any other specific policy recommendations on crypto before the election, unless they were in response to new Congressional activity or SEC actions.
Moe Vela, a senior advisor to Unicoin and a former advisor to Joe Biden when Biden was Vice President, said he also doesn’t expect to see any more specific policies from Trump before the election. But Vela said Trump’s vague and blustery comments are dangerous for the industry. “We already see what no regulation results in,” Vela said. “We have people [from the crypto industry] in prison because of it.”
Rather than discussing crypto, Trump instead focused on international economic competition, particularly with China; border security and the impact of illegal immigration on American jobs; and the importance of energy independence. Though Trump did not connect energy independence explicitly to crypto, he asserted that strong energy policies were critical for advancing American innovation, especially AI.
Trump’s Past Positions on Crypto
Trump has defined himself as the pro-crypto candidate in the 2024 presidential election, casting himself in opposition to the Biden-Harris administration, which has been widely seen in the industry as unfairly tough on crypto. This follows previous skeptical statements from Trump several years ago when he said cryptocurrencies were “highly volatile and based on thin air” and seemed “like a scam.”
Read more: At Bitcoin Conference, Trump Promises to Fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler If He Wins
Among the crypto policies Trump has recently proposed is the creation of a strategic bitcoin reserve, which would be initially made up of the existing 210,000 bitcoin the US government already has from seizing assets from cyber criminals. Trump has also promised to end what critics in the crypto industry have dubbed “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” an alleged plan by the Biden administration to cut off crypto companies from using U.S. banks, and that if elected, he would establish a “Bitcoin and Crypto Presidential Advisory Council” to design transparent crypto regulation, a frequently wished-for development by the industry. He has also said that he wants the United States to lead the world in bitcoin mining, and make the US the “crypto capital of the planet.”
Read more: How to Invest In Crypto Depending on Whether Trump or Harris Becomes President
With his support, Trump’s three sons are leading a project called World Liberty Financial, a DeFi project that would provide high-yield investment opportunities, according to the website’s metadata. The project has been extremely scarce on details, however. World Liberty Financial’s posts on X say that the organization hopes to drive “the mass adoption of stablecoins and decentralized finance” and will help bolster the US dollar against foreign nation state attacks.
Contrast With the Biden/Harris Administration
By contrast, Biden-appointed SEC Chair Gary Gensler has pursued numerous regulatory actions against major crypto businesses including Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken, and is widely seen as being anti-crypto. Trump promised to “fire” Gary Gensler on Day 1” if he were elected president at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville July, a statement that was greeted with thunderous applause.
Biden also vetoed a House proposal to eliminate SAB 121, an SEC accounting rule that imposed stringent requirements on crypto custodians that the industry was strongly opposed to. Harris, meanwhile, has been quiet so far on what her cryptocurrency policies would be. Democratic crypto advocates have been hoping her administration would bring a “reset” from the Biden administration’s hostile policies, and a campaign aide said at the recent Democratic National Convention that she would support the growth of digital assets. However, Harris did not mention crypto at all during her speeches at the convention, and her most definitive comments have simply been that she would support “emerging technologies.”
UPDATE (Sept. 5, 2024, 2:59 p.m. ET): Updated with comments from Ron Hammond and Moe Vela, and additional detail on Trump’s speech.
