Sunday, July 28, 2024

Is Bitcoin a Republican issue?

 Why Nashville's crypto conference has a partisan edge


Hadley Hitson, USA TODAY
Fri, July 26, 2024 

NASHVILLE - As the Bitcoin2024 conference kicked off in Nashville’s Music City Center Thursday, attendees agreed: Cryptocurrency is political.

With current Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump headlining the event Saturday, the rest of the schedule is decked out with GOP politicians, independents like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a few Democratic congressmen.

From Tennessee, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Sen. Bill Hagerty are scheduled to speak. Also leading the agenda are famous government-surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden, former Republican U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and celebrity Russell Brand, along with hundreds of tech-industry speakers.

What's drawn legislators and crypto-industry insiders together in Nashville?

“Politicians follow votes,” BitcoinIRA cofounder Chris Kline said. “These are the same reasons they make stops in battleground states like Wisconsin, Ohio and even Nevada and Arizona. Bitcoin is no longer a niche interest group.”

There are also going to be several high-profile fundraising events.

David Bailey, CEO of conference organizer Nashville-based BTC Media — the parent company of Bitcoin Magazine — announced Tuesday that the conference was “in talks” with Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign to schedule her as a speaker. The next day, he said she declined the invitation and that “it would have been a disaster for her” anyway.

He then criticized Harris's political record and wrote on X: "Major democrat donor told me Kamala says privately 'Bitcoin is money for criminals.'"

Some crypto professionals said they view Bitcoin as inherently apolitical, but that’s changing as calls for consistency in crypto regulation grow louder with more support coming from Republicans.

Earlier this year, Trump pivoted on his critical Bitcoin views to embrace digital currencies. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden vetoed legislation that crypto leaders said would have improved their abilities to work with traditional banks.

Nationwide, eyes are turning to Nashville’s Bitcoin conference to see what progress will be made, if any politicians commit to a federal Bitcoin strategic reserve and if any surprise tech billionaires pop into town.

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, Tesla, and Memphis-based xAI is rumored to take the stage at the conference.

Legislation is also expected to be discussed to bolster the profile of cryptocurrency.
A possible federal Bitcoin strategic reserve

Reports swirled throughout the crypto community over the last week that a federal Bitcoin strategic reserve could soon become a possibility in the U.S.

This would result in the federal government buying up an unspecified number of Bitcoin units and holding onto them — in the same way that the country maintains the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

“A Bitcoin strategic reserve would mean that the U.S. is signaling to the rest of the world that we’re going to make a diligent effort to hold Bitcoin as part of the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, but also possibly even look into putting more mining efforts here in the U.S.,” Kline said.

Mining is the process that creates new Bitcoins and verifies transactions.

Educational Bitcoin nonprofit CEO Dennis Porter said the reserve proposal could come from Trump, and Fox Business reported Wednesday that Wyoming’s Sen. Cynthia Lummis plans to announce legislation to create a Bitcoin reserve this week.

Lummis plans to speak in Nashville on Friday. Her office did not respond to The Tennessean’s request for comment on Thursday.
Support from Elon Musk

Bailey, head of the company hosting the Bitcoin conference, has alluded to a surprise guest who may speak in Nashville this weekend.

Bailey’s posts on X about making “more programming space” and “apologizing in advance for breaking the internet” sparked conjecture that tech billionaire Elon Musk could be in attendance. NFT news platform SolanaFloor also reported that Musk’s private plane landed in Memphis earlier this week.

Musk has been a strong supporter of cryptocurrencies, and following the attempted assassination of Trump earlier this month, he officially endorsed Trump for the 2024 election.
How Bitcoin aligns with the GOP

The Bitcoin2024 lineup — a who's who of Republican and libertarian celebrities, influencers and politicians — has a distinct partisan edge.

Several conference attendees said Republicans offer more favorable regulatory terms.

“Bitcoin itself is a way of decoupling money in the state, and so that might align more with the Republican or conservative side in terms of fundamental values of taking that power away from the government and the ability to choose a new form of money,” Quai Network cofounder Alan Orwick said. “That's kind of where the lines are being drawn.”

Others pointed to an “unfriendly” environment with the Securities Exchange Commission that they’ve noticed in the last four years.

“We haven't seen what VP Harris's stance is yet, but we're assuming it's the same as the Biden administration, which has been very hostile, especially in regards to the SEC Chairman Gary Gensler,” CastleFunds President Peter Eberle said. “Unfortunately, some of the innovative companies have decided to set up shop overseas, where the regulatory framework is more friendly.”

Eberle said he believes a Republican administration would foster more affable guidelines for crypto.

Hadley Hitson covers trending business, dining and health care for The Tennessean. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to The Tennessean.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville Bitcoin conference: GOP, libertarian politics at play


Trump Gets Upstaged by RFK Jr.’s Claims of ‘Bitcoin Fort Knox’

Teresa Xie and Stephanie Lai
Sat, July 27, 2024



(Bloomberg) -- The cryptocurrency community has anxiously been awaiting a speech by Donald Trump on Saturday, but his opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have stolen Trump’s thunder by announcing that the former president is considering the creation of a massive government reserve of Bitcoin should he return to the White House.

“I understand that tomorrow President Trump may announce his plan to build a Bitcoin Fort Knox and authorize the US government to buy a million Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset,” Kennedy told the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on Friday, a day before Trump was scheduled to speak at the same event. “And I applaud that announcement.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the remarks.

Kennedy told the conference that he would go even further than Trump if he’s elected: He would sign an executive order on his first day in office directing the Treasury to buy Bitcoin every day and add it to the tokens currently held by the Department of Justice until the US builds a reserve of at least 4 million Bitcoin.

One million Bitcoin currently have a market value of more than $68 billion, while 4 million are worth about $274 billion. Bitcoin currently has a market capitalization of about $1.3 trillion.

Kennedy said his plan would ensure US dominance in the sector and allow the nation to have the same proportion of Bitcoin as it has gold in its reserves, which would drive up Bitcoin’s valuation.

Kennedy, who is running a distant third behind Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in polls ahead of the November presidential election, also said he would order the Internal Revenue Service to treat all transactions between Bitcoin and the US dollar as nontaxable.

Trump’s speech to the Bitcoin conference is scheduled for 3 p.m. New York time on Saturday, and will follow a fund-raiser targeting donors in the crypto industry who are in Nashville for the event. He invited supporters to an event with an asking price of $844,600 for a seat at a crypto-themed round table. Other prominent political figures at the conference include Trump’s vice presidential pick JD Vance, as well as his Republican primary opponent Vivek Ramaswamy.

The conference’s exhibition space was filled with promotions mixing Bitcoin and Trump themes, including vendors selling red baseball hats that said “Make Bitcoin Great Again” and “Bitcoin Made in America.”

“If Trump is elected, the U.S. will have to add Bitcoin as a reserve, because it is digital gold,” said Arseniy Grusha, chief executive officer of data-center firm Dataprana, who attended the conference. “The earlier they do that, the better it will be for the United States.”

Trump’s support for cryptocurrencies this election cycle is still relatively new and marks a departure from his stance on digital assets during his presidency, when he proclaimed that he was “not a fan” of Bitcoin and warned that unregulated crypto assets could facilitate unlawful behavior.

It’s no accident that crypto industry executives have crossed paths with the Republican nominee’s campaign trail: A potential second Trump term is likely their best chance for a softer approach from regulators, who heavily pursued crypto companies under President Joe Biden following the 2022 collapse of the FTX exchange and a string of industry bankruptcies that followed. Wealthy crypto executives have donated millions to Trump and pro-crypto political groups.

The former president ramped up his backing of cryptocurrencies in early June, when he met with several Bitcoin miners at his Mar-a-Lago Club and promised that he would advocate for US miners if elected.

Since that meeting, Trump has continued to publicly tout his support for cryptocurrencies, including posting on his Truth Social account that Bitcoin mining could be “our last line of defense against a CBDC,” referring to a central bank digital currency. Trump’s disdain for CBDCs echos sentiments held by crypto executives, who see a potential digital dollar as a way for the government to enhance financial surveillance on its citizens.

The former president also amended his party’s platform for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to read: “Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency.”

‘Doesn’t Really Matter’

Despite Trump’s support for the industry, not everyone at the Nashville conference is a fan.

“I never voted and I won’t vote in this election and I probably never will,” said Colin Aulds, founder of crypto miner 10NetZero. “I don’t trust Trump to not backstab us. Politicians lie, and he’s still a politician.”

For others in Nashville, the enthusiasm for Bitcoin far outweighed their enthusiasm for any candidate.

“It doesn’t really matter who the president is,” said Chris Kramer, who traveled from Arizona for the event. “I don’t really care much about it, because Bitcoin will do its thing regardless.”

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

No comments:

Post a Comment