NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Donald Trump wants to be the crypto president.
The Republican presidential candidate was the keynote speaker Saturday at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville where he courted about 20,000 die-hard bitcoin believers and industry executives.
Trump said the reason he addressed the conference could be summed up in two words: America First. “If crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted and made in the USA,” he said.
The former president made a series of promises to the industry in his 50-minute speech.
If elected president, Trump said he intends to create a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile” where the government would keep the tokens it holds or acquires. The crypto industry has long hoped that the U.S. would establish a bitcoin reserve comparable to its gold reserve to lend legitimacy to the cryptocurrency and stabilize its price.
The U.S. government currently holds some 164,000 bitcoins seized from cybercriminals and darknet markets, a stash worth about $8.8 billion at current market value, according to an analysis of public filings by crypto firm 21.co.
Trump also promised to appoint a bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council tasked with designing transparent regulatory guidance. Crypto executives have long complained that the industry is governed by enforcement, without a clear regulatory framework.
The most thunderous applause of the afternoon came when Trump pledged to fire Gary Gensler—the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has waged a sweeping crackdown on the crypto industry—on his first day in office. (Whether Trump could immediately remove Gensler is legally questionable. The SEC chair was appointed in 2021, and his term doesn’t expire until 2026.)
Trump has increasingly cast himself as a supporter of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. That marks an about-face from his presidency when he said digital assets were based on “thin air.” His running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, is a longtime crypto advocate who held more than $100,000 in bitcoin as of 2022, his latest financial disclosures show.
Trump is making a play for crypto’s vast war chest—the industry is suddenly flush with cash after a more than 60% jump in bitcoin prices this year. Donors including exchange Coinbase Global, venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and payments firm Ripple have poured nearly $170 million into a trio of political-action committees to lobby on behalf of the industry.
Fairshake, the largest of the three, and two affiliates have raised the second-largest sum of any super PAC this election cycle, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks political spending. Trump became the first major-party presidential candidate to accept digital assets in May.
On the campaign trail and his social-media platform, Trump has championed bitcoin-mining in the U.S., an energy-intensive process in which computers guess random numbers in the hopes of unlocking new bitcoins. He has also sworn to “end Joe Biden’s war on crypto,” a nod to the dozens of lawsuits Gensler’s SEC has filed against exchanges and other companies that have galvanized crypto leaders to get involved in politics.
It is a stunning turnabout for the crypto industry, which became toxic after the 2022 collapse of crypto exchange FTX when members of Congress who took donations from the industry faced pressure to return them.
Two years later, the crypto industry is eager to cheer on Trump.
During a June fundraiser in San Francisco, Trump spoke with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—the co-founders of crypto exchange Gemini—and executives from Coinbase and Ripple about the need to keep crypto companies in the U.S. All three companies have been sued by the SEC for violating investor-protection laws and selling unregistered securities.
Other companies have chosen not to operate domestically for fear of drawing the ire of regulators, said Trevor Traina, Trump’s former ambassador to Austria and one of the organizers of the fundraiser.
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Kamala Harris, the expected Democratic nominee and a California native, has close ties to Silicon Valley and could also make a push for the crypto industry’s support. Her advisers reached out to Coinbase and Ripple in recent days in an effort to reset relations, according to people familiar with the matter. Harris has yet to publicly discuss crypto at much length.
Trump’s attitude toward crypto appeared to shift in 2022 when he saw a business opportunity in nonfungible tokens, crypto’s version of trading cards. The first batch featured Trump as a superhero. Last year, he launched mug shot NFTs, following his surrender in Georgia to answer charges that he operated a criminal enterprise that sought to overturn President Biden’s 2020 electoral victory in the state.
In May, Trump invited mug shot NFT holders to Mar-a-Lago, his dual Florida residence and social club. After an attendee asked if he could donate cryptocurrencies, Trump said that if the campaign didn’t accept them already, it would shortly. Someone in the audience offered to help, and donations opened two weeks later.
Trump said at the conference that his campaign has raised $25 million so far.
Write to Vicky Ge Huang at vicky.huang@wsj.com and Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com
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Appeared in the July 29, 2024, print edition as 'Trump Courts Crypto Industry'.