Former President Donald Trump delivers a speech on day three of the Bitcoin 2024 conference at Music City Center on July 27, 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee.

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The former president’s comments come as the race to capture the votes and campaign cash of America’s leading fintech adopters takes center stage in the 2024 presidential contest.

“This afternoon I am laying out my plan to ensure that the United States is the cryptocurrency capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world, and we will do it,” Trump said.

But Trump’s promise to simply maintain the U.S. government’s current bitcoin holdings was a less radical proposal for the crypto crowd than other proposals at the conference.

Third party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.For example, during his speech at the Friday Bitcoin Conference, he promised to launch a reserve of 4 million bitcoins, starting with the stockpiles of bitcoins that the US government has already accumulated from criminal seizures. Kennedy said he would mandate that the government buy 550 bitcoins per day until the reserve reached 4 million.

Donald Trump during his speech at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Shortly after Trump’s speech, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., read her own legislative proposal to build up an official U.S. federal reserve of 1 million bitcoins over five years.

“It will be held for at least 20 years and can be used for one purpose: reducing our debt,” Lummis said.

Bitcoin’s price dipped briefly during Trump’s speech but has recovered and is up slightly on the day as of 5:15 p.m. ET.

Throughout his remarks, the former president worked to draw contrasts between the Republican Party’s growing embrace of cryptocurrencies and the hardline regulatory approach that has characterized the Biden administration.

“The Biden-Harris administration’s crackdown on crypto and bitcoin is wrong and it’s very bad for our country,” Trump said. “Let me tell you, if they win this election, you’re all going to leave. They’re going to be vicious. They’re going to be ruthless. They’re going to do things you wouldn’t believe.”

Trump went on to list a series of crypto-friendly promises to a crowd of enthusiastic bitcoin supporters, vowing to dismantle what he called the “anti-crypto crusade” of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler,” Trump said, referring to Biden’s nominee. Security and Exchange Commission which has taken an aggressive approach to cryptocurrency regulation.

The president does not have the power to fire appointed commissioners. Even if Trump were to appoint a new SEC chairman, Gensler would remain a commissioner at the independent agency.

The former president also promised to create a “presidential advisory council on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.”

“The rules will be written by people who love their industry, not people who hate their industry,” Trump said.

The Republican presidential candidate also held a fundraiser in Nashville, with tickets reaching $844,600. In June, the CEO of BTC Inc. David Baileywho organized the conference, promised to raise $100 million and mobilize more than 5,000,000 voters for Trump’s re-election effort, as the bitcoin sector increasingly turns to the Trump camp for support.

Trump taking to the main stage to directly address the bitcoin community is the latest in a months-long campaign to woo the crypto contingent, including accepting donations in virtual tokenspromising to end President Joe Biden’s “war on crypto” and arguing that all future bitcoins will be made in America. It’s also a major turnaround for the Republican presidential candidate.

Trump publicly rejected bitcoin when he was in the White House. In July 2019He said he was “not a fan” of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He said tokens are not money, that their value was “based on air” and warned that unregulated crypto assets could help facilitate drug trafficking, among “other illegal activities.”

“Bitcoin just seems like a scam,” he told Fox in a 2021 phone interview. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing with the dollar.”

“I want the dollar to be the currency of the world, that’s what I’ve always said,” Trump continued in his conversation with Fox.

But five years, a lost presidential election and millions of dollars from the cryptocurrency lobby later, the Republican presidential candidate sang the praises of the digital currency in largest bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville, which began on Thursday.

“Bitcoin represents freedom, sovereignty and independence from government coercion and control,” Trump said during his keynote address.

Trump’s shift on bitcoin comes as the Republican Party vows to cut through the red tape of the Biden-Harris administration, working to make cryptocurrency regulation a ballot issue for November, especially as inflation consistently ranks as a top priority among voters in polls.

As cryptocurrency lobbyists and supporters become more present in Washington, questions are emerging about whether the Democratic Party will stick with the hardline regulatory approach of recent years or ease its stance.

“Every presidential candidate needs to understand that pro-innovation and pro-digital asset voters are here to stay,” Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina told CNBC in an interview, adding that cryptocurrency regulation should not become a “partisan political football.”

“I want to keep this a bipartisan issue. I don’t want Donald Trump to politicize this issue,” Rep. Nickel said.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Ca., echoed Rep. Nickel’s sentiment, saying cryptocurrencies should not become a partisan issue but will require regulation like any technology.

“I don’t really see why it’s partisan. Being against bitcoin is like being against cellphones. It’s like being against AI. It’s like being against laptops,” Khanna told CNBC. “It’s a technology. Have thoughtful regulation around the technology, but it’s a technology that has gone from being worth about $10,000 to $80,000.”

Representatives Khanna and Nickel were two of the only Democrats to attend the Bitcoin Conference.

Bitcoin Conference 2024 Organizers say they were briefly in talks to have Vice President Kamala Harris attend the conference, though she declined. But billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban posted on X that Harris’s campaign has reached out with questions about crypto, so it appears the vice president is looking into the space and potentially figuring out where her policies, if elected president, might go.

“I think we’ll hear from Vice President Harris soon on this. And I’m very optimistic that we’ll have a reset. And I think that’s going to matter a lot,” Rep. Nickel said. “This issue isn’t going anywhere. And we have to make sure that we continue to pursue it in a bipartisan way.”

Harris’ team has already started reaching out to people close to cryptocurrency companies to set up meetings, Financial Times reported on Saturday.

Trump’s recent shift in sentiment towards the digital asset space has coincided with a sudden influx of interest and money from the country’s top tech talent.

He has raised more than $4 million in a mix of cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, ether, the US dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC and several memecoins, with contributors hailing from 12 states, including some battleground states.

Crypto billionaire twins and venture capitalists Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss led the effort, each contributing 15.57 bitcoins, or just over $1 million at the time of the donation, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission — though they received a partial refund because their contributions exceeded the $844,600 limit.

There are several other venture capitalists who are pro-cryptocurrency and they have also pledged millions to Trump’s campaign.

Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz told the employees Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) are planning to make significant donations to political action committees supporting Trump’s campaign. Sequoia Capital partners are backing Trump, as is venture capitalist David’s Bagswho helped the former president raise $12 million at a fundraiser he hosted at his San Francisco home. The centralized cryptocurrency exchange’s chief legal officers Coinbase and blockchain giant Ripple were both there.

These members of the tech elite are also contributing heavily to pro-crypto super PACs like Fairshake, which has raised over $200 million to elect pro-crypto candidates across the ballot and on both sides of the aisle.

But the NBC News report finds that the vice president’s team is trying to win support from some of the undecided big tech donors, many of whom have remained on the sidelines while President Joe Biden remained in the race. Their tone may be changing now that the vice president is the party’s de facto nominee.

It helps that Harris has a long history in California.

She has been raising funds in the tech community for years, including from people working in Amazonas, Alphabet, Microsoft It is Litter.

“The shift that has occurred in the last three days is dramatic,” said Steve Westly, a venture capitalist and former California gubernatorial candidate. told NBC News“I don’t think I’ve ever seen such enthusiasm in any campaign I’ve been involved in.”

This comes as Trump’s vice presidential running mate JD Vance is set to hold a fundraiser in Palo Alto on Monday.

— CNBC’s Rebecca Picciotto contributed to this report.

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