Is Trump's Speech at Bitcoin Conference a Pivotal Moment for Cryptocurrency?

Author: George Kaloudis Translation: Plain Blockchain

Former US President Donald Trump still plans to speak in person at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville later this month, despite the injuries he suffered following a failed assassination attempt on Saturday. This is a big moment for cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are now officially on the campaign trail, beyond casual mentions to curry favor with whatever voter groups and fundraising political action committees need one day. The legitimacy that the industry has craved since its inception has now been materialized at a conference about Orange Coin.

I'm no political strategist, but I always find it odd that presidential candidates will campaign in states they simply can't lose. There's no way Trump, or any Republican candidate, is going to lose Tennessee in the 2024 presidential election (let's face it, friends: Joe Biden is not Bill Clinton). Still, Trump chose to stop by Tennessee and attend a Bitcoin conference during such a busy campaign season, just as candidates give campaign speeches in airplane hangars to win over military voters or canvass for blue-collar Americans in front of factories.

Despite polls and data showing that most Americans do not use or hold cryptocurrencies — 7% of American adults use or have held cryptocurrencies in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve; 28% of Republicans hold or have purchased cryptocurrencies, according to crypto investment firm Paradigm; 52 million Americans own cryptocurrencies, according to crypto trading platform Coinbase — but cryptocurrencies are still part of Trump's re-election strategy. The Republican Party even listed cryptocurrencies as a sub-point of "supporting innovation" in its official platform marketing materials (in the unabridged, downloadable PDF version), above "artificial intelligence" and "expanding freedom, prosperity and space security."

The Republican Party has been competing hard to become the pro-crypto party in the United States. For example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others made official statements in advance against central bank digital currencies (perhaps to appear anti-China and pro-capitalist). Another example was the House of Representatives’ voting effort to override President Biden’s veto of a pro-crypto resolution, which ended up voting almost entirely along party lines (except for one Republican opponent and bipartisan support from 21 Democrats).

In my opinion, cryptocurrency has become one of the hot issues for Republican voters in this election cycle as a symbol of personal freedom, so much so that Trump has completely changed his anti-crypto rhetoric. In 2019, Trump tweeted: "I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, they are not money, their value is highly volatile and based on air. Unregulated crypto assets can facilitate illegal behavior, including drug trafficking and other illegal activity..." But in 2021, he called Bitcoin a scam against the US dollar in an interview on Fox Business.

However, at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, he expressed support, saying, “…if you’re for crypto, you better vote for Trump.”

Clearly, there are votes to be won, and Trump wants them.

Fifty million voters, one hundred thousand votes: things are going to get weird

We need to be realistic and rational. Let’s assume there are 50 million people who hold crypto, as Coinbase claims. Are they all really single-issue voters? Of course not. Last year, Ryan Selkis, founder of crypto research firm Messari and a social media activist, waged “war” on the anti-crypto stance of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and Senator Elizabeth Warren in an interview with CoinDesk’s Marc Hochstein. He said that not everyone who holds crypto will vote for crypto candidates.

But in fact, candidates don’t need everyone to support crypto. As Selkis said, “Some states are won or lost by tens of thousands of votes. So you don’t need 50 million people to be single-issue voters. You just need a few hundred thousand people voting in the right areas.” He is right. I think the 2024 US presidential election will be decided by about 100,000 votes (of course, not ordinary votes, I mean the net votes in key states for high votes). Therefore, if a candidate wants to win, he must win as many votes as possible in key areas.

Since President Biden doesn’t seem interested in addressing or courting the cryptocurrency vote (a notable misstep in my opinion, as supporting crypto doesn’t make people feel bad about a candidate, provided the stance is correct), every single-issue crypto voter is likely to vote for Trump and try to influence those around them to vote for Trump as well. So it makes perfect sense that the Republican Party sees engaging in the cryptocurrency issue as a valuable way to win these crucial votes.

What’s more, the conference is drawing people from all over to Tennessee. Instead of addressing voters in Tennessee, Trump will be facing a diverse electorate from all over the country (dare I say, a symbol of decentralization? If you can get Bitcoin holders to vote…). The idea makes too much sense. Cryptocurrency is now clearly firmly integrated into the mainstream. Even if cryptocurrencies are weird, American politics has always been weird. And it will continue to be weird: it will be weird to have Secret Service agents at a Bitcoin conference; it will be weird to have mainstream media (not just their finance or technology reporters) covering the conference; it will be weird when Trump once again says he wants all remaining Bitcoin to be made in the United States.

I guess when things get weird, the weird people get professional.

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Author: Vernacular Blockchain
This article is the opinion of the PANews columnist, does not represent the position of PANews, and does not bear legal responsibility. The article and opinions do not constitute investment advice.
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