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

Former US President Donald Trump plans to speak in person at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville later this month despite injuries he sustained in a failed assassination attempt on Saturday — a big deal for cryptocurrencies.

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

I’m not a political strategist, but I’ve always found it odd that presidential candidates spend time campaigning in states they have no risk of losing. Trump or any Republican candidate is not going to lose Tennessee in the 2024 presidential election (let’s face it, folks: Joe Biden, not Bill Clinton). And yet Trump is dropping by the Volunteer State for a Bitcoin conference during a very busy campaign season, just as a candidate is making campaign speeches in airplane hangars and outside factories, rallying the Teamsters for the union vote on behalf of blue-collar workers in America.

While surveys and data show 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 have ever bought crypto (according to crypto investment firm Paradigm), and 52 million Americans own crypto (according to crypto exchange Coinbase) — it’s still part of Trump’s reelection strategy. The GOP even included crypto in its official platform marketing materials (in the unabridged, downloadable pdf version) under the subheading “Champion Innovation,” just above “Artificial Intelligence” and “Expanding Freedom, Prosperity, and Security in Space.”

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

(At least that’s enough if you factor in donations from the crypto-rich: A fundraiser for Trump at the event would cost more than $800,000 per seat.)

Republicans are struggling to be seen as the pro-crypto party in the United States (against anyone… except perhaps Independents or Libertarians). One example is the official anti-CBDC statements by people like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (perhaps to appear anti-China and pro-capitalist). Another is the House effort to vote to overturn President Biden’s veto of a pro-crypto resolution in a way that falls squarely along party lines (with the exception of one Republican opponent and some bipartisan support via 21 Democrats).

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To me, crypto has been a feather in the cap for the individual freedom talking point beloved of GOP voters this election season, so much so that Trump has completely backed down from 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 out of thin air. Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate illegal behavior, including drug dealing and other illegal activities…” Then in 2021, he said in a Fox Business interview that Bitcoin is a scam to the dollar.

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

I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and in the air. Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate illegal behavior including drug dealing and other illegal activities….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2019

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

50 million voters, 100 thousand votes: Things are going to get weird

We need a healthy dose of reality news. Let’s say there are 50 million cryptocurrency holders as Coinbase suggests. Are they really single-issue voters?

No, of course not.

Ryan Selkis, founder of crypto research firm Messari and social media agitator who has declared “war” on Chairman Gary Gensler’s SEC and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) anti-crypto army, indirectly admitted in an interview with CoinDesk’s Marc Hochstein last year that not everyone who owns crypto will vote for the pro-crypto candidate.

But you don’t even need that to win.

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

He’s right. I think the 2024 US presidential election will be decided by 100,000 votes (I’m talking about the net votes in the contested states, not the popular vote, of course), and so a candidate needs as many votes as he can get in the high-stakes areas to win. And since President Biden has no interest in engaging or influencing crypto votes (a major misstep in my opinion, since appearing pro-crypto is not enough to turn people off to a candidate, as long as the positioning is correct), every crypto voter focused on a single issue is likely to vote for Trump and try to convince those around him to vote for Trump as well.

From this perspective, it makes sense that the Republican Party believes cryptocurrencies are a valuable place to gain some critical votes.

Moreover, the conference is a spectacle that people travel to Tennessee to attend. Trump will not be appealing to Tennessee voters, he will be appealing to a geographically diverse (dare I say… decentralized?) segment of the American electorate (that is, if you can convince Bitcoiners to vote…).

This makes perfect sense. Crypto is now so clearly entrenched in the mainstream. And while crypto is weird, so is American politics. And the weirdness will continue: It will be weird to have Secret Service agents scattered around a Bitcoin conference, it will be weird to have mainstream media (and not just finance or tech reporters) covering the meeting, and it will be weird to have President Trump reiterate that he wants all remaining Bitcoin to be Made in America.

I guess when things get weird, the weirdos turn professional.

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

UPDATE (July 15, 2024, 17:02 UTC): Added details about fundraising.