Former President Donald Trump wants you to know that he loves Bitcoin now.
Trump spoke at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on Saturday, calling cryptocurrencies “the steel industry of 100 years ago.”
“I think you’re still in the early stages,” Trump told a gathering of crypto industry leaders. “I can see it happening. In just 15 years, bitcoin has gone from being an idea posted anonymously on an internet message board to the ninth most valuable asset in the world.”
Trump said he would 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.”
The plan, he said, would include firing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, creating a presidential advisory council on crypto, blocking the creation of a central digital currency bank, and eliminating federal regulation of crypto known as “Checkpoint 2.0.”
Trump also vowed to keep 100% of all federally held bitcoin — much of which has been seized by law enforcement — as a “strategic national bitcoin reserve.”
Trump’s opinion on bitcoin appears to have changed dramatically. During his presidency in 2019, Trump called bitcoin “very volatile and baseless.”
“We have only one real currency in the U.S., and it is stronger than ever,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “It is called the United States Dollar!”
But Trump has become a big fan of crypto as he seeks support from prominent crypto investors. Earlier this month, Gemini 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 that galvanized his supporters. The currency hit a high of $62,000 as investors began betting on Trump returning to power in November.
One of Trump’s opponents, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also spoke at Friday’s conference, teasing Trump’s stockpiling plans.
“I understand that tomorrow President Trump may announce his plan to build a Fort Knox that runs on bitcoin and allow the U.S. government to purchase a million bitcoins as a strategic reserve asset,” Kennedy said. “And I applaud that announcement.”
But Kennedy said he would go further. The candidate would immediately sign an executive order directing the U.S. Treasury Department to buy bitcoins every day and add them to the government’s current token until the country builds up a reserve of four million bitcoins, he said.
One million bitcoins is worth $69 billion, according to Coinbase. Four billion bitcoins is worth $276 billion.
Trump also took the opportunity to attack the crypto position of his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. “She’s very much against it,” he said. Harris’s exact stance on cryptocurrency, however, remains unknown. She has yet to make any clear public comments on the matter.
The former president also pledged to commute Ross Ulbricht’s prison sentence in his speech at the conference. Ulbricht is serving a life sentence for operating the dark web site Silk Road, which was used to sell illegal drugs and other black market products from 2011 to 2013.
