Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump leaves the stage after speaking at a campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan on July 20, 2024.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
NASHVILLE — Former President Donald Trump is the biggest headline bitcoin conference of the year on Saturday afternoon, as the race to win the votes and campaign cash of America’s front-line fintech adopters takes center stage in the 2024 presidential contest.
The Republican presidential candidate will also host an accompanying fundraiser in Nashville, with tickets expected to top $844,600. In June, BTC Inc. CEO David Bailey, who organized the conference, pledged to raise $100 million and engage more than 5,000,000 voters for Trump’s re-election bid as the bitcoin sector increasingly turns to Trump camp for support.
Trump taking the main stage to directly address the bitcoin community is the latest in a months-long campaign to appeal to the cryptocurrency body, including accepting donations in virtual tokens, pledging to end the ‘war on crypto’ of President Joe Biden and advocating that future bitcoin be made in America. He is also quite the face of the Republican presidential candidate.
Trump was rejected very publicly bitcoin when he was in the White House. In July 2019, said he is “not a fan” of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He said tokens are not money, that their value is “based on air” and warned that unregulated crypto assets could help facilitate the drug trade, among “other illegal activities”.
“Bitcoin just seems like a scam,” he told Fox in a phone interview in 2021. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency that competes with the dollar.”
“I want the dollar to be the currency of the world, that’s what I’ve always said,” Trump continued in his conversation with Fox.
But five years, a lost presidential election and millions of dollars from the crypto lobby later, the Republican presidential candidate is now the frontrunner largest bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville, which began Thursday.
Trump’s Bitcoin shift comes as the GOP pledges to cut red tape from the Biden-Harris administration, working to make cryptocurrency regulation a November ballot issue, especially as inflation consistently ranks as voters’ top priority in polls .
As cryptocurrency lobbyists and advocates gain a greater presence in Washington, it raises questions about whether the Democratic Party will deepen the tough regulatory approach of recent years or loosen its position.
“Every presidential candidate has to understand, digital voters, pro-innovation voters are here to stay,” Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina said in an interview with CNBC, adding that cryptocurrency regulation should not to become “party political football”.
“I want to keep this a bipartisan issue. I don’t want Donald Trump to politicize this issue,” Rep. Nickel said.
Bitcoin Conference 2024 Organizers say they were in brief talks to have Vice President Kamala Harris appear at the convention, though she ultimately declined. However, billionaire businessman Mark Cuban posted on X that the Harris campaign had been in touch with questions about crypto, so it appears the vice president is looking into this space and possibly finding out where her policies might go if elected president. .
“I think we’re going to hear from Vice President Harris soon about that. And I’m very optimistic that we’re going to have a rollback. And I think that’s going to be very important,” said Rep. Nickel. “This issue is not going anywhere. And we need to make sure we continue to embrace it in a bipartisan way.”
Harris’ team has already started reaching out to people close to crypto companies to set up meetings Financial Times reported on Saturday.
Trump’s 180 on bitcoin
Trump’s recent rebound in sentiment for the digital asset space has coincided with a sudden influx of interest and cash from the country’s top tech talent.
It has raised more than $4 million in a mix of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ether, the stablecoin USDC and various memecoins, with contributors from 12 states, including some battlegrounds.
Cryptobillionaire twins and venture capitalists Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss led the way, each contributing 15.57 bitcoins, or just over $1 million at the time of their donation, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission — though they received a partial refund , because contributions exceeded the $844,600 limit.
There are several other venture capitalists who are pro-crypto and have pledged millions to the Trump campaign as well.
Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz told Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) employees that they plan to make major donations to political action committees supporting Trump’s campaign. Sequoia Capital partners are backing Trump, as is venture capitalist David Sachs, who helped the former president raise $12 million at a fundraiser he hosted at his San Francisco home. The chief legal officers for the central crypto exchange Coinbase and blockchain giant Ripple were both there.
These members of the tech elite also contribute heavily to crypto super PACs like Fairshake, which has raised more than $200 million to elect pro-crypto candidates up and down the ballot on both sides of the aisle.
But report from NBC News finds that the vice president’s team is seeking to win the support of some of the undecided big-tech donors, many of whom stayed on the sidelines while President Joe Biden remained in the race. Their tune may change now that the vice president is the party’s de facto nominee.
It helps that Harris has a long history in California.
It has been raising money in the tech community for years, including those who work at Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and apple.
“The turnaround that’s happened in the last three days is dramatic,” said Steve Westly, a businessman and one-time gubernatorial candidate for California. he told NBC News. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a wave of enthusiasm in any campaign I’ve been involved with.”
This comes as Trump’s running mate JD Vance is set to hold a fundraiser of his own in Palo Alto on Monday.
