Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has campaigned for votes from the crypto industry in the US state of Tennessee. Bitcoin stands for “freedom, sovereignty and independence from state coercion and control,” Trump said on Saturday (local time) at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville. If he moves into the White House, he will be a “pro-Bitcoin president” and will not allow the US government to sell its Bitcoin holdings. These would form the “core of the strategic national Bitcoin holdings.”
“If we don’t embrace crypto and Bitcoin technology, China will,” Trump said. If crypto is to determine the future, he wants it “mined, minted and manufactured in the United States.” Regarding the price of electricity as a key factor in the location of companies for so-called cryptocurrency mining, Trump also promised to make US energy the cheapest “of any nation on earth” by increasing the production of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
The former president had previously expressed extreme skepticism about cryptocurrencies. “I’m not a fan of Bitcoin and other currencies that are not money,” he said in 2019. Now, however, he compared them to the growth of the “steel industry 100 years ago.”
In this context, the 78-year-old Republican presidential candidate also denounced the US rules on crypto assets by President Joe Biden’s administration. “The Biden-Harris administration’s suppression of crypto and Bitcoin is wrong and very bad for our country,” Trump said to cheers from conference participants.
Against this backdrop, Trump announced that if he won the election he would fire the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, who is skeptical about cryptocurrencies. The crypto scene accuses the SEC of being too cautious and slow in implementing the rules. The conference participants reacted accordingly enthusiastically to Trump’s announcement, which prompted him to joke: “I didn’t know he was so unpopular.”
“We have to fight and we have to win,” Trump implored the audience, looking ahead to the November vote. “I promise the Bitcoin community that the anti-crypto crusade of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be over the day I take the oath of office. It will end, it will be done.”
The presidential election in the USA will take place on November 5th. Former President Trump was nominated as the Republican candidate in mid-July. The Democratic Party has not yet chosen its candidate. After US President Joe Biden withdrew from the race for the White House, US Vice President Kamala Harris is considered the favorite for her party’s presidential nomination.
