After surviving an attempted assassination, former US President Trump has decided to attend the Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee as planned. He is scheduled to deliver a 30-minute speech on the last day of the conference. This information is sourced from an article written by George Kaloudis and compiled and translated by 白話區塊鏈 (Plain-Language Blockchain).
Background:
Trump’s provocative statement on Taiwan’s protection fee, “TSMC falls below 1000 NT dollars”! White House: Taiwan’s long-term military purchases contribute greatly to the US economy.
Context:
Trump’s plan to personally speak at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville, USA later this month has gained significance, despite being injured in an assassination attempt last Saturday.
This is an important moment for cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies have officially entered the political stage, surpassing the casual mentions made solely to please certain voter groups and fundraising political action committees. The industry, which has long sought legitimacy since its inception, is now being materialized at a conference focused on orange coins.
I am not a political strategist, but I find it strange that presidential candidates campaign in states they have no chance of losing. Trump, or any Republican candidate, is unlikely to lose Tennessee in the 2024 presidential election (let’s face it, folks: Joe Biden is not Bill Clinton).
Nevertheless, Trump still chose to pass through Tennessee during this busy campaign season to attend the Bitcoin conference, just as candidates give campaign speeches in airplane hangars to win military voters or rally blue-collar workers in front of factories.
Although opinion polls and data show that the majority of Americans do not use or hold cryptocurrencies – according to the Federal Reserve’s data, 7% of US adults used or held cryptocurrencies in 2023; according to cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm, 28% of Republicans hold or have purchased cryptocurrencies; and according to cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase, 52 million Americans own cryptocurrencies – cryptocurrencies are still part of Trump’s reelection strategy.
The Republican Party even markets cryptocurrencies as a sub-point under “Supporting Innovation” in its official platform materials, ranking above “Artificial Intelligence” and “Expanding Freedom, Prosperity, and Space Security.”
The Republican Party has been striving to become the party that supports cryptocurrencies in the United States. For example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others have issued official statements opposing central bank digital currencies (possibly to appear anti-China and pro-capitalism).
Another example is the vote in the House of Representatives to overturn President Biden’s veto on a resolution supporting cryptocurrencies, which resulted in nearly complete party-line voting (except for one Republican opponent and bipartisan support from 21 Democrats).
In my view, cryptocurrencies have become one of the passionate issues for Republican voters in this election cycle, symbolizing personal freedom, to the extent that Trump has completely changed his stance against cryptocurrencies.
In 2019, Trump wrote on Twitter, “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 activities…” But in 2021, he called Bitcoin a scam against the US dollar in an interview on Fox Business Channel.
However, earlier this year at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, he expressed support, saying, “…if you support cryptocurrency, you’d better vote for Trump.”
Clearly, there are votes to be won, and Trump wants them.
Fifty million voters, a hundred thousand votes: the situation will become strange.
We need a realistic and rational analysis. Assuming there are fifty million cryptocurrency holders, as Coinbase claims, are they all single-issue voters? Certainly not.
Last year, Ryan Selkis, the founder of cryptocurrency research firm Messari and a social media activist, declared a “war” on SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and Senator Elizabeth Warren over their anti-cryptocurrency positions in an interview with CoinDesk’s Marc Hochstein. He stated that not all cryptocurrency holders would vote for candidates supporting cryptocurrencies.
But in reality, candidates do not need everyone to support cryptocurrencies. As Selkis said, “The outcome in certain states is determined by tens of thousands of votes. So you don’t need fifty million people to be single-issue voters. You just need hundreds of thousands of people to vote in the right areas.” He is absolutely right.
I believe the 2024 US presidential election will be decided by approximately a hundred thousand votes (of course, not ordinary votes, I mean the net vote count in key states that are crucial for winning). Therefore, if candidates want to win, they must win as many votes as possible in key areas.
Since President Biden seems uninterested in handling or courting cryptocurrency votes (in my view, a significant mistake because supporting cryptocurrencies, if positioned correctly, would not disappoint people), each single-issue cryptocurrency voter may vote for Trump and try to influence those around them to do the same.
Therefore, the Republican Party sees addressing the issue of cryptocurrencies as a valuable way to win these crucial votes, which is completely reasonable.
More importantly, this conference has attracted people from all over the country to Tennessee. Trump will not be speaking to Tennessee voters, but will face a diverse group of voters from across the United States (I dare say, this is a symbol of decentralization? If only Bitcoin holders could vote…). This idea is very reasonable.
Cryptocurrencies have now firmly integrated into the mainstream. Even though cryptocurrencies are strange, US politics has always been strange.
And this strangeness will continue: having Secret Service agents deployed at the Bitcoin conference will be strange; mainstream media (not just their financial or technology reporters) covering the conference will be strange; and it will be strange when Trump once again expresses his desire for all remaining Bitcoin to be made in America.
I guess when things get strange, those strange people become professional.
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