Trump seeks cryptocurrency industry support at bitcoin conference

Many of the nation’s leading cryptocurrency companies, executives, investors and fanatics are beginning to unite around former president Donald Trump’s bid for the White House, hoping that their public embrace — and increasingly generous campaign checks — might entice and elect a candidate who will spare the industry from federal regulation.

Under President Biden, the U.S. government has aggressively cracked down on crypto, seeking to protect average Americans from scams and ensure the largely anonymous tokens do not enable illicit activities. But the fierce oversight has chafed crypto advocates and angered wealthy political benefactors in Silicon Valley. To ward off new federal probes, environmental protections and financial safeguards, they have gravitated toward Trump — even if they don’t always like him — in the hopes he can win and deliver them relief in Washington.

“I think what people are excited about is, if Trump comes in with a new circle, and Cabinet members, and people, that it’s going to change, and change for the better,” said Marshall Beard, the chief operating officer at Gemini, a crypto trading platform and banking service. He described himself as apolitical, but his company’s founders, billionaire investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, have donated heavily in support of Trump.

Trump has gladly accepted the entreaties: Newly awash in crypto cash, he has celebrated bitcoin and other digital tokens, marking a stunning shift from his time in office, when Trump proclaimed he was “not a fan” of bitcoin and linked such assets to drug sales. The early uptick in fundraising support has troubled some Democrats, who have scrambled to show they are not hostile to the industry.

But Trump’s conversion will be on stark display Saturday, when he speaks directly to the thousands of bitcoin owners, traders and investors who have descended this year on Nashville. Many in attendance expect the former president to announce he wants the U.S. government to stockpile its own reserves of the currency, a radical idea that is bound to send the price of bitcoin skyrocketing — just hours after Trump holds a high-dollar fundraiser with the nation’s crypto elite.

Even before Trump arrived, there were hints of his growing support across the sprawling Music City Center, the site of this year’s bitcoin Conference. A smattering of “Make bitcoin Great Again” hats — some in Trump’s signature style, others in bitcoin orange — dotted the rows of booths where crypto entrepreneurs hawked new tokens, investing tips and “tax avoidance strategies,” in the words of one firm, which parked near its kiosk a ruby-red motorcycle adorned with the play on Trump’s slogan. (Staff there declined to be interviewed.)

Outside, a digital sign truck periodically circled, flashing photos of Trump and his new running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), a longtime crypto advocate who has reported owning as much as $250,000 in bitcoin. The vehicle pitched passersby on “MAGA VP,” a type of “memecoin” — unaffiliated with the campaign — that aims to help the former president’s most fervent supporters earn money. It teased that customers who purchased $50 of the token would “win a special prize.”

“At this party, today, it seems like there’s a leaning toward Trump, and I think it’s an appreciation for the first major presidential candidate to come along and say this might be actually a really good idea,” said Mike Belshe, the chief executive of BitGo, which offers a crypto wallet service. He plans to host a fundraiser reception for Vance in Palo Alto, Calif., next week, according to an invite later obtained by The Washington Post.

The support for Trump underscored the rapid political awakening underway in the crypto industry. Stung by a series of major scandals — and facing the prospect of tough regulation in Washington — crypto companies, executives and investors have shelled out $121 million this election in a bid to defeat potential foes and elect new friends in Washington, according to the money-in-politics watchdog OpenSecrets.

“We’ve seen tens of millions of dollars pouring in, in an attempt to make sure anti-regulation politicians are the ones who take power,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, a left-leaning watchdog group.

For many crypto titans, the catalyst for action came two years ago, after the downfall of FTX, previously the world’s third-largest crypto marketplace. Many Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), immediately demanded stringent new rules, while the Securities and Exchange Commission, led by Chairman Gary Gensler, filed a battery of lawsuits alleging the best-known crypto firms had failed to follow basic federal investor protections.

Often, the targets of SEC scrutiny — including Coinbase, a digital asset marketplace, and Ripple, which offers the popular XRP token — blasted the cases as evidence of Gensler’s bias against the industry. They coupled their court battles with an expensive lobbying campaign designed to neuter the SEC and stave off other regulations, including rules meant to prevent terrorist groups from trafficking in crypto. And crypto executives and investors began pouring money into the 2024 election, launching three super PACs that have run ads targeting congressional candidates who oppose digital currencies.

This year, David Bailey — the chief executive of BTC Inc., which organized the conference in Nashville — personally approached Trump in the hopes he might reverse his views on crypto. Major Silicon Valley donors, including investors David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, hosted lucrative fundraisers for the former president in June. Elon Musk, a crypto booster and owner of X, formerly Twitter, endorsed Trump after the former president’s near-assassination in July; the venture capital duo Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz soon revealed their support, too.

With every check and endorsement, Trump appeared to grow more receptive. On his social media site, Truth Social, he described himself in May as “VERY POSITIVE AND OPEN MINDED TO CRYPTOCURRENCY COMPANIES.” Two months later, he touted crypto as an official part of the 2024 GOP platform, which declared the party would “end Democrats’ unlawful and un-American Crypto crackdown.”

“If there’s a politician that sees the potential of the industry, and wants it to thrive, generally the voters and donations are going to go in that direction,” said Brian Morgenstern, who oversees policy for the crypto giant Riot Platforms.

Riot is a bitcoin miner: It manages the vast, energy-intensive machines running complex calculations to generate individual tokens. The industry has warred with the Biden administration, and Riot successfully sued the Energy Department after it demanded bitcoin miners turn over data about their energy usage.

Executives from Riot and other companies directly appealed to Trump in June, who told them that “he understands quite clearly why people are looking for alternatives to legacy financial systems,” Morgenstern recalled in Nashville this week. He previously served under Trump at the Treasury Department, back when the then-president had been critical of crypto.

After the meeting, Trump commemorated the gathering on Truth Social: “VOTE FOR TRUMP!” he began. “Biden’s hatred of bitcoin only helps China, Russia, and the Radical Communist Left. We want all the remaining bitcoin to be MADE IN THE USA!!!”

Despite his earlier opposition, some crypto devotees seemed to welcome Trump’s attention.

At an unattended expo booth on Friday, the image of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist after this month’s assassination attempt had been altered so that it appeared he was holding up a bitcoin. Gawkers stopped to snap photos of the rotating illustration, which was superimposed atop the usual rocket logo for Moonshot, a company that manufactures key components for bitcoin mining.

“Hopefully we’re starting to see winds change in the United States, and maybe we’ll get some change with a new president,” mused Ray Kamrath, the chief commercial officer at Bakkt, a crypto trading platform, during a panel discussion later about the future of regulation.

Kamrath expressed hope that the next year might finally resolve the issue of whether some cryptocurrencies are securities, and in the process, shield more of the industry from the SEC.

“Let’s just enjoy for a moment that crypto, bitcoin, is a bona fide election year issue in the United States,” responded Bobby Zagotta, the U.S. chief executive officer of Bitstamp, a crypto marketplace, to a smattering of applause. In an interview afterward, Zagotta said he sensed the “Trump mania just walking the floor.”

A crowd of a few hundred had erupted in celebration a day earlier, when Luke Rudkowski, the founder of the group We Are Change, noted on a panel that Trump had publicly promised to release Ross Ulbricht from prison. A longtime darling of the crypto community, Ulbricht faces a life sentence for convictions related to his creation and operation of Silk Road, a dark web marketplace often used to buy and sell illicit goods.

“It’s happening with Donald Trump; he’s speaking up for it,” said Rudkowski, whose group has been faulted by the Southern Poverty Law Center for spreading conspiracy theories.

Eager to reap the financial benefits of his new, growing base of support, the Trump campaign plans to hold at least two fundraisers in Nashville. To attend the Saturday reception, take a photo with Trump and join his policy roundtable, donors must write checks for $844,600 to his reelection and other Republican campaign committees, according to an invitation obtained by The Post. Already, Trump’s aides have boasted about raising roughly $4 million in various cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin.

Sensing Trump’s fundraising edge, other politicians have looked to court crypto’s cash: On street corners outside the convention hall, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) stationed trucks with digital signs that pitched her as a “bitcoin champion” — and directed viewers to a donation website (in dollars or cryptocurrency). Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who is running as an independent in the 2024 presidential race, made his own appeal Friday, telling a packed auditorium he would unveil a host of policies that would see the U.S. government purchase and warehouse bitcoin.

“I’m very happy to learn I’m not the only one talking about bitcoin in this year’s election,” said Kennedy, who appeared at the same conference last year. He later added: “I hope President Trump’s commitment is about more than political expediency.”

But Trump’s inroads in particular have spooked some national Democrats, who do not want to be seen as wholly opposed to crypto. A small group of party officials even huddled privately earlier this month to discuss how to better engage with the politically ascendant industry, having spent years cultivating relationships — and cashing checks — from the broader, liberal-leaning Silicon Valley tech set.

“The challenge the Democrats have is name[d] Gary Gensler,” Mark Cuban, a prominent tech investor, said in an email. “He is pushing a new technology out of the USA. That is not a strong position for a party looking to win.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents a slice of the Bay Area, convened the gathering with senior aides to Biden and top tech investors including Cuban and Anthony Scaramucci, who served briefly under Trump but since has defected to support Biden and now Vice President Harris. Scaramucci later said that some participants specifically called for firing Gensler and blocking the renomination of Caroline Crenshaw for another term as an SEC commissioner, arguing they have stuck an unfairly defiant tone against crypto. Spokespeople for the White House, as well as Gensler and Crenshaw, did not comment for this story.

“I’ll put it simply: After years in the desert, and in a regulatory drought in the Biden administration, I think they see an advocate,” Scaramucci said of Trump.

The outreach has only intensified after Harris replaced Biden as the party’s presumptive nominee, elevating a longtime California politico with deep roots in the tech sector. Some fervent crypto supporters tried to make a last-minute pitch for Harris to appear alongside Trump in Nashville, but she ultimately did not. Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

“With the changing of the top of the ticket, it’s an opportunity to reevaluate, reset,” said Brad Garlinghouse, the chief executive of Ripple.

Garlinghouse said he had not yet endorsed or donated to either candidate, but he signaled that many in his industry had supported Trump primarily out of necessity.

“I don’t think this is about choosing one party over another,” he continued. “I think the Republicans, led by Donald Trump, are playing chess, and I think the Democrats are playing checkers.”