Trump pledges to embrace 'industries of the future' such as cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence

Author: Cheyenne Ligon, CoinDesk; Translator: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Summary

• Former President Donald Trump spent only a brief moment talking about cryptocurrencies during his lengthy economic speech on his intentions for the U.S. economy in a second term.

• Trump reiterated his promise to make the United States the world capital of cryptocurrency.

Donald Trump reiterated his promise in public remarks Thursday that if re-elected president, he would make the United States the cryptocurrency capital of the world, although digital assets received only a brief mention during his wide-ranging speech on his economic agenda.

“We won’t attack the industries of the future, we’ll embrace them, and that includes making the United States the world capital of cryptocurrency and bitcoin,” Trump told an audience at a gathering of the Economic Club of New York.

Trump himself may play a direct role in the industry, serving as the “chief cryptocurrency advocate” for World Liberty Finance, an upcoming cryptocurrency project linked to his family.

In the hour-long speech, Trump laid out his plans to overhaul the U.S. economy if he wins a second term, including cutting regulations and promoting growth in domestic energy production.

“I will launch a historic campaign to free our economy from burdensome regulation,” Trump said. "I pledge today that for every new regulation that is passed during my second term, we will eliminate at least ten times as many regulations as we can," Trump added. If elected, he would immediately issue a national emergency declaration to increase domestic energy production, citing the need to increase power to continue growing the artificial intelligence industry and keep the U.S. tech industry competitive with China. "With these sweeping powers, we will break through every bureaucratic barrier and quickly approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants, new reactors of every kind. Because we can create this massive supply fairly quickly, prices will immediately fall, and we will be leaders, not laggards," Trump said.

Trump also said he would take up Elon Musk's suggestion to set up a government efficiency commission to audit federal government spending and identify waste, and offered to lead the commission. Trump joked that the boss of Google's parent company X (formerly Twitter) and Tesla CEO "is not busy."