Trump courts Bitcoin and crypto fans for votes and donations

Donald Trump has told one of the largest cryptocurrency events of the year that if he is re-elected president he will fire the chairperson of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the first day.

Trump was the keynote speaker at Bitcoin 2024 on Saturday, a gathering of industry heavyweights in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Republican presidential candidate used the event to court voters and encourage campaign donations from the tech community.

Cryptocurrency has emerged as a political battleground for Republicans, with Trump claiming the Democratic Party and Vice-President Kamala Harris were “against crypto”.

The audience was at its most animated when Trump declared “on day one I will fire Gary Gensler”, the SEC chair nominated by current President Joe Biden. The crowd cheered loudly and started to chant “Trump” at this declaration.

Mr Gensler led a crackdown on the crypto industry, and has previously said the sector is rife with “hucksters”.

The SEC brought charges against the “King of Crypto” Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years for stealing billions of dollars from customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

Speaking for about 45 minutes, Trump outlined some of his ideas for the sector if he were to win November’s election. He said he would make the US the cryptocurrency capital of the world. His support for the industry is a 180 turn from his comments in 2021, when he told Fox Business he saw Bitcoin as a “scam” affecting the value of the US dollar.

Trump told the crowd at the event he would keep 100% of Bitcoin that the US government currently holds or acquires, adding that it would be a “national Bitcoin stockpile”.

The former president also said he would “immediately appoint a Bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council”.

He talked about the power needed to mine cryptocurrency. “You need tremendous amounts of electricity” he said, adding he would build powerplants “to get that done” and would be “using fossil fuels”.

There has been increasing support among some tech leaders for Trump’s presidential campaign in recent months. Tesla founder Elon Musk, who is the world’s richest person, has endorsed Trump. And crypto tycoons, the Winklevoss twins, who were at Saturday’s speech, have also rallied behind him.

Trump brought up that his campaign takes cryptocurrency donations, saying in the two months since he allowed crypto transactions, he received $25m (£20m) in donations. However, he did not say how much of the payments were from cryptocurrency.

Trump used his speech to frame cryptocurrency regulation as a partisan issue, saying the Biden administration was “anti-crypto”.

A number of Republican lawmakers also attended Trump’s speech, including Senators Tim Scott and Tommy Tuberville. Former Republican presidential candidate and Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy was there as well.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr and Democratic Party lawmakers Wiley Nickel and Ro Khanna also spoke at the event.

Earlier at Bitcoin 2024 , Democratic congressman Nickel said Kamala Harris was taking a “forward-looking approach to digital assets and blockchain technology”.