United States President Joe Biden has officially withdrawn from the 2024 Presidential election, just four months before election day.
Biden, after a five-decade career, faced a reckoning over his age and his ability to defeat Trump. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his party faces a historic effort to replace him.
Biden, 81, could not reverse growing sentiment within his party that he was too frail to serve and destined to lose to Donald Trump in November. He backed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee.
In a July 21 statement, Biden didn’t cite his reasons for stepping down, instead merely claiming that it was in the “best interest of my party and my country.” His absence leaves the Democrats to face the 2024 election day, set for Nov. 5, without his candidacy.
Biden has been a somewhat controversial figure within the crypto industry due to his opposition to the sector. On June 1, Biden vetoed a resolution that would have overruled the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) No. 121.
Biden’s decision faced backlash from the crypto community, which argued that it hindered innovation within the country.
“This is a slap in the face to innovation and financial freedom,” Digital Chamber chief policy officer Cody Carbone stated.
The news of Biden stepping down comes just two weeks after Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, survived an assassination attempt.
Macroeconomist Lyn Alden argues that if Trump is victorious in the upcoming US presidential elections, it could lead to the extension of corporate tax cuts, which in turn could favor the crypto markets.
Trump has been promoting his pro-crypto stance for some time and recently revealed that he plans to release another one of his non-fungible token (NFT) collections after his previous three collections sold out much quicker than he expected.
Meanwhile, he reiterated the importance of the US being a leader in the crypto industry to prevent another nation from claiming the title.
“It’s a baby. It’s an infant right now. But I don’t want to be responsible for allowing another country to take over this sphere,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg.