Donald Trump, the former U.S. president who’s on course for a showdown with his 2020 rival president Joe Biden this year, has warned Biden is trying to kill the U.S. crypto industry.
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Trump, who has recently begun accepting crypto campaign donations after making millions of dollars selling crypto-based digital trading cards, said Biden wants bitcoin and crypto in the U.S. “to die a slow and painful death.”
“I am very positive and open minded to cryptocurrency companies, and all things related to this new and burgeoning industry,” Trump posted to Truth Social, the social media clone of X, formerly known as Twitter, that he launched in 2022.
“Our country must be the leader in the field,” Trump said. “There is no second place. Crooked Joe Biden, on the other hand, the worst president in the history of our country, wants it to die a slow and painful death. That will never happen with me.”
This week, shifting political winds in Washington that had been blowing firmly against the technology since the implosion of the FTX crypto exchange, helped ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, to score a fully-fledged Wall Street spot exchange-traded fund (ETF)—something that will likely further open up the crypto market to a cohort of investors that had previously eschewed the asset class.
Earlier this month, Shark Tank billionaire Mark Cuban, an outspoken supporter of president Biden, warned Trump could win the 2024 election due to Biden’s opposition to crypto.
Bitcoin has bounced back over the last year, eclipsing its all-time high of just over $70,000 per bitcoin, helped by the long-awaited arrival of a fleet of spot bitcoin ETFs on Wall Street.
“Ahead of the U.S. elections, Biden’s team has been radically changing its attitudes toward crypto,” Sergei Gorev, risk manager at bitcoin and crypto trading platform YouHodler, said in emailed comments. “Also note that Trump’s popularity is caused, among other things, by his positive attitude toward the crypto market.”
Galaxy Digital chief executive Mike Novogratz, a former Goldman SachsGoldman Sachs 0.0% partner and crypto stalwart, has predicted bitcoin, ethereum and crypto prices “are going to be much higher than here” due to the political sea-change.
On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act known as Fit21, which would split up responsibility for cryptocurrency regulation between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), with bipartisan support despite the Biden administration opposing the bill.
A “widespread shift among Democrats” has led the SEC to reverse course on its planned rejection of spot ethereum ETFs this week, according to Novogratz, who told CNBC: “It feels like someone at the Biden White House made a call and said ‘Guys, we can’t be the party against crypto anymore.'”
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