Former President Donald Trump spoke at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, where he told the crowd he would make cryptocurrency a priority if elected.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump wants you to know he loves Bitcoin now.
Trump spoke at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on Saturday, calling cryptocurrency "the steel industry of 100 years ago."
"I think you're just in your infancy," Trump told the meeting of crypto industry leaders. "I can see it happening. In just 15 years, bitcoin has gone from merely an idea posted anonymously on an internet message board to being the ninth most valuable asset anywhere in the world."
Trump said he'd lay out a plan "to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world."
This plan, he said, would include firing the US Securities and Exchange Commission chair, Gary Gensler, creating a crypto presidential advisory council, blocking the creation of a central digital currency bank, and eliminating federal regulations on crypto known as "Checkpoint 2.0."
Trump also pledged to keep 100% of all bitcoin owned by the federal government — most of which was confiscated by law enforcement — to keep as a "strategic national bitcoin stockpile."
Trump's opinion of bitcoin appears to have come full circle. During his presidency in 2019, Trump called bitcoin "highly volatile and based on thin air."
"We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever," Trump wrote on what was then known as Twitter. "It is called the United States Dollar!"
But Trump is now a bonafide crypto stan as he courts support from leading crypto investors. Earlier this month, Gemini co-founders and crypto investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss donated $250,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC.
Bitcoin prices surged after the assassination attempt on Trump earlier this month rallied his base. The currency reached a high of $62,000 as investors started betting on Trump's return to power in November.
One of Trump's opponents, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also spoke at the conference on Friday, teasing Trump's stockpile plans.
"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 said. "And I applaud that announcement."
But Kennedy said he'd go even further. The candidate would immediately sign an executive order directing the US Treasury to buy bitcoin daily and add it to the government's current tokens until the country builds a reserve of four million bitcoin, he said.
One million bitcoin is about $69 billion, according to Coinbase. Four billion bitcoin is about $276 billion.
Trump also took the opportunity to attack the crypto position of his likely Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. "She's very against it," he said. But Harris's stance on cryptocurrency actually remains unknown. She has made no clear public comments on the issue.
The former president also promised to commute the prison sentence of Ross Ulbricht during his speech at the conference. Ulbricht is serving a life sentence for operating the Silk Road site on the dark web, which was used to sell drugs and other black market products from 2011 to 2013.
