Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves the stage after delivering a speech at a campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 20, 2024.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
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NASHVILLE — Former President Donald Trump leads the largest Bitcoin The conference of the year kicks off Saturday afternoon, as the race for votes and campaign money for fintech adopters in the United States heads to the forefront in the 2024 presidential election.
The Republican presidential candidate will also host a fundraiser in Nashville, with tickets set to go for $844,600. In June, BTC Inc. CEO David Bailey, who organized the conference, pledged to raise $100 million and mobilize more than 5 million voters for Trump’s reelection effort, as the bitcoin industry increasingly turns to the Trump camp for support.
Trump’s ascent to the main stage to directly address the bitcoin community is the latest in a months-long campaign to woo the crypto community, including accepting donations in the form of virtual tokens, pledging to end President Joe Biden’s “war” on crypto, and calling for all future bitcoin to be manufactured in America. It also represents a major shift in the Republican presidential candidate’s stance.
Trump publicly refused Bitcoin In July 2019, he said he was “not a fan” of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He said the tokens were not money, their value was “based on air,” and warned that unregulated crypto assets could help facilitate drug trafficking, among other “illegal activities.”
“Bitcoin looks like it’s a scam,” he said in a phone interview with Fox in 2021. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing with the dollar.”
“I want the dollar to be the world's currency, that's what I've always said,” Trump told Fox.
But five years, a lost presidential election, and millions of dollars in crypto lobbying dollars later, the Republican presidential candidate is now headlining the biggest bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville, which kicked off on Thursday.
Trump’s shift on Bitcoin comes as the Republican Party has pledged to clean up the bureaucracy in the Biden-Harris administration and work to turn crypto regulation into a November voting issue, especially as inflation consistently ranks high on voters’ priorities in polls.
As the presence of crypto lobbyists and advocates grows in Washington, it raises questions about whether the Democratic Party will continue its aggressive regulatory approach of the past several years or soften its stance.
“Every presidential candidate needs to understand that pro-digital-asset voters and innovators are here to stay,” Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina told CNBC in an interview, adding that crypto regulation should not become a “partisan political football.”
“I want to keep this a bipartisan issue,” Rep. Nickel said. “I don’t want Donald Trump to politicize this issue.”
Bitcoin 2024 conference organizers say they briefly held talks to have Vice President Kamala Harris attend the conference, though she ultimately declined. But billionaire businessman Mark Cuban posted on X that Harris’s campaign had reached out to her about cryptocurrency questions, so it seems the vice president is eyeing the space and perhaps determining where her policies could end up if she is elected president.
“I think we’re going to hear from Vice President Harris soon on this. I’m very optimistic that we’re going to be able to reset things. I think that’s going to be incredibly important,” Rep. Nickel said. “This issue is not going away. We have to make sure that we continue to embrace this in a bipartisan way.”
The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Harris' team has already begun reaching out to people close to crypto companies to arrange meetings.
Trump reverses Bitcoin decision by 180%
Trump’s recent warming of sentiment toward the digital asset space has coincided with a sudden influx of interest and criticism from the country’s top tech talent.
It has raised over $4 million in a mix of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, the US dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC, and several memecoins, with contributors from 12 states, including a few battleground states.
Cryptocurrency billionaire twins and venture capitalists Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were the top donors, each contributing 15.57 bitcoin, 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 the contributions exceeded the $844,600 cap.
There are a number of other venture capitalists who support cryptocurrencies, and they have pledged millions of dollars to the Trump campaign as well.
Investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have informed Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) employees that they plan to make large donations to political action committees supporting the Trump campaign. Sequoia Capital partners are backing Trump, as is venture capitalist David Sacks, who helped the former president raise $12 million at a fundraiser he hosted at his San Francisco home. Centralized cryptocurrency exchange’s chief legal officer Coinbase Blockchain giant Ripple was present there.
These members of the tech elite also contribute heavily to pro-crypto political action committees like Fairshake, which has raised over $200 million to elect pro-crypto candidates from the top down, and on both sides of the aisle.
But NBC News reports that the vice president’s team is looking to win over some undecided Big Tech donors, many of whom have been on the sidelines while President Joe Biden has remained in the race. Their tone may have changed now that the vice president is the party’s de facto nominee.
It helps that Harris has a long record in California.
She has been fundraising in the tech community for years, including from those working in Amazon, the alphabet, Microsoft And apple.
“The turnaround over the last three days has been dramatic,” Steve Westley, a venture capitalist and former California governor candidate, told NBC News. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much enthusiasm in any campaign I’ve ever been involved in.”
This comes as Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, is scheduled to hold a fundraiser in Palo Alto on Monday.
