Trump’s Speech at Bitcoin Conference Will Mark a Pivotal Moment for Crypto

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is still scheduled to speak, in person, at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville later this month, despite injuries he sustained from a failed assassination attempt Saturday. For crypto, this is huge.

Crypto is now on the campaign trail in an official capacity, extending beyond throwaway lines to appease whichever voting demographic and fundraising PAC is to be appeased that day. The shred of legitimacy the industry has been begging for since its inception has arrived, embodied in an orange man at a conference about an orange coin.

I’m no political strategist, but I always found it strange when presidential candidates spend time campaigning in states they have no risk of losing. Trump, or any Republican candidate for that matter, is not going to lose Tennessee in the 2024 presidential election (let’s face it, folks: Joe Biden is no Bill Clinton). And yet, Trump is stopping by a Bitcoin conference in the Volunteer State, during the immensely busy campaign season, in the same way a candidate makes stump speeches in airplane hangars for the military vote and in front of factories in the name of the American blue collar, with Teamsters in tow, for the union vote.

Even though the polls and data suggest that most people don’t use or own crypto — 7% of American adults used or held crypto in 2023 (according to the Federal Reserve), 28% of Republicans hold or had once bought crypto (according to crypto investment firm Paradigm), 52 million Americans own it (according to crypto exchange Coinbase) — it’s still part of Trump’s reelection strategy. The GOP has even added crypto to its official platform marketing materials (in the unabridged, pdf-downloadable version) under the “Champion Innovation” subpoint, just above “Artificial Intelligence” and “Expanding Freedom, Prosperity, and Safety in Space.”

Trump’s appearance in Nashville has a clear message: The content of the conference is more important than the location. There are enough single-issue crypto voters out there to make a difference for Trump.

(At least, enough if you factor in prospective donations from the crypto rich: A Trump fundraiser at the event costs more than $800,000 a seat.)

The Republicans have been jostling (against … no one, except maybe Independents or Libertarians) to be viewed as the pro-crypto party in the United States. One example is the preemptive anti-CBDC official declarations by people like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (perhaps to appear anti-China and pro-capitalism). Another is the voting effort in the House of Representatives to overturn President Biden’s veto of a pro-crypto resolution falling neatly on party lines (save one Republican dissenter and some bipartisan support via 21 democrats).

To me, it appears that in this election cycle, crypto is standing in as a feather in the cap for the individual freedom talking point GOP voters love, to the point where Trump has completely backtracked on his anti-crypto rhetoric. In 2019 Trump tweeted: “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity….” Then in 2021 he said Bitcoin is a scam against the dollar” during a Fox Business interview.

But then earlier this year at a Mar-a-Lago dinner he voiced his support, saying “…if you’re in favor of crypto, you better vote for Trump”.

Clearly, there are votes to be won and Trump wants them.

We’re due a healthy scoop of reality. Say there are 50 million crypto holders, as Coinbase suggests. Are they all really single-issue voters?

No. Of course not.

In an interview with CoinDesk’s Marc Hochstein last year, founder of crypto research firm Messari and social media rabble-rouser Ryan Selkis, who has declared “‘war” against Chairman Gary Gensler’s SEC and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) anti-crypto army, tacitly acknowledged that not everyone who held crypto would vote for the pro-crypto candidate.

But you don’t even need that to win.

“Certain states are only won or lost by tens of thousands of votes. So you don’t need to have 50 million people become single-issue voters. You only need a couple hundred thousand in the right areas,” said Selkis.

He’s right. I submit that the 2024 U.S. presidential election will be decided by something like 100,000 votes (not the popular vote, of course, I mean net votes in the battleground states) and so if a candidate is to win, he needs as many votes as he can get in the high-stakes areas. And because President Biden appears to have no interest in dealing with or courting the crypto vote (a significant misstep, in my opinion, as appearing pro-crypto isn’t enough to turn people off a candidate so long as the positioning is correct), every single-issue crypto voter is likely to vote for Trump and try to influence those around them to also vote for Trump.

In this way, it makes perfect sense that the GOP believes crypto is a worthwhile place to win some of those critical votes.

What’s more, the conference is a spectacle which people are traveling to Tennessee for. Trump won’t be speaking to Tennessee voters, he’ll be speaking to a geographically diverse (dare I … say … decentralized?) cross-section of American voters (that is, if you can get Bitcoiners to vote …).

It simply makes too much sense. Crypto is very clearly now solidified in the mainstream. And even though crypto is weird, American politics has been weird too. And the weirdness will continue: it’s going to be weird having Secret Service agents scattered about the Bitcoin conference, it’s going to be weird that mainstream media (and not just their financial or tech reporters) will be in attendance to cover the proceedings, and it’s going to be weird when President Trump again says he wants all the remaining Bitcoin to be Made in America.

I guess that when the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.

Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.

UPDATE (July 15, 2024, 17:02 UTC): Adds detail about fundraiser.