On the campaign trail, Trump went out of his way to court their favor. In July, speaking to thousands of bitcoiners at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump duly sang from the bitcoin hymn sheet, promising to cement the US as the foremost bitcoin mining powerhouse, establish a national “bitcoin stockpile,” and appoint a bitcoin advisory council if reelected. Trump claimed he would turn the US into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
In October, Trump went as far as to launch his own crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, which his family has marketed as a way to “make finance great again.” The platform is set to provide peer-to-peer borrowing and lending services of some flavor, though the Trumps have provided few hard details.
“If you were a single-issue voter that cares about the growth of sound money through bitcoin, Trump was the clear choice,” says Peter McCormack, host of the podcast What Bitcoin Did.
By contrast, Harris’ Democratic platform for 2024 did not include any mention of crypto, and she made only a single reference to crypto on the campaign trail, in a pitch to donors in New York City, Bloomberg reported. “We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting consumers and investors. We will create a safe business environment with consistent and transparent rules of the road,” Harris is quoted as saying.
Reticence in the Harris camp to take a public stance on crypto was interpreted by industry members as a signal that her presidency would represent a continuation of the bad old times under Biden. “We saw no evidence that she was going to moderate the stance at all,” says Carter.
Democrat-supporting members of the crypto industry were left in an awkward position; though they aligned with Harris’ politics, it was conceivable that victory for Trump would be a more beneficial outcome for the sector. “As a crypto entrepreneur, I’m excited about the prospect of a bull market,” says Jonathan Padilla, one of the organizers of Crypto4Harris, a coalition of left-leaning members of the crypto industry. “For crypto in isolation, Trump is probably going to be the much quicker shot of sugar,” says Padilla, even if the president later loses interest.
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