Nashville CNN —

For a while, Donald Trump would have been an unlikely headliner at a cryptocurrency conference.

As president, Trump has declared that bitcoin is “not money” and criticized it as “highly volatile and based on nothing.” He has warned that crypto assets have helped facilitate illegal underground markets.

“We have only one real currency in the United States, and it is stronger than ever,” Trump wrote on Twitter in 2019. “It’s called the United States Dollar!”

But on Saturday, Trump addressed the cryptocurrency industry’s largest annual gathering here in Nashville, not as a cynic but as one of its most well-known supporters – the culmination of a total reversal of the issue during the former president’s last run for the White House.

Despite cryptocurrency’s troubling recent history and his own past reservations, Trump has fully embraced the hype and hopes of the nascent industry. His campaign is now accepting bitcoin donations — and has raised about $4 million, a person familiar with his fundraising said. He has attacked the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate the industry as a “war on crypto” without acknowledging the massive fraud schemes that have destroyed public trust in digital currencies. And he has vowed as president to make it easier for cryptocurrency mining companies to operate in the United States.

“Otherwise, other countries will,” Trump said earlier this month in Wisconsin.

The industry, for its part, has embraced Trump. Its leaders and investors have donated millions of dollars to his campaign and aligned political committees. They are cheerleaders for his candidacy to their sizable online audiences and provided him with a platform on Saturday to speak directly to the expected 20,000 attendees of this year’s Bitcoin Conference.

“Many of these people consider themselves single-issue voters,” said technology writer Jacob Silverman, author of the best-selling book “Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud.” “If Trump or anyone else says they’re pro-bitcoin, that matters to them.”

Trump made several crypto-friendly policy commitments on Saturday, including vowing to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler and create a “strategic national stockpile of bitcoin,” all part of his campaign promise to encourage the growth of the industry in the U.S.

“If cryptocurrency is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted and made in the USA,” Trump said at the convention, ahead of a more traditional campaign event in St. Cloud, Minnesota, later in the day.

Since Trump voiced his opposition to bitcoin in 2019, the volatile industry has only faced more turmoil, most notably the arrest, trial and arrest of Sam Bankman-Friedthe founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Once the face of a company that counted comedian Larry David and superstar quarterback Tom Brady among its celebrity endorsers, Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March to 25 years in prison for running a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme through his companies.

The Trump campaign did not say what prompted the former president’s 180-degree turnaround on bitcoin. Trump also did not address one of the central criticisms of digital currencies: that they lack any real, practical use for them and are a highly speculative investment.

Trump campaign spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement to CNN that “cryptocurrency innovators and others in the technology sector are under attack” from Democrats, while the former president was “ready to encourage American leadership in this and other emerging technologies.”

Republican allies have joined Trump in his shift to bitcoin. Speaking at the conference on Friday, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott argued that the former president understands attendees’ concerns about financial freedom — a common refrain in the crypto community.

“We want people, whether they love their dollars or their digital assets, to be in charge of their decisions,” Scott said.

Industry leaders have been courting Trump for months and have been educating his campaign about his policy agenda and the opportunity to influence voters on the issue, David Bailey, CEO of bitcoin-focused media company BTC Inc, said in a recent interview.

Their pitch, Bailey acknowledged, included “how much industry support he can get” by embracing cryptocurrency. Their conversations included a meeting earlier this summer with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

“Everything accelerated quickly at that moment,” said Bailey, whose company hosts the annual conference where Trump spoke on Saturday.

Indeed, Trump’s endorsement came soon after. Billionaire cryptocurrency moguls Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss pledged to donate $1 million in bitcoin to Trump’s campaign. The Federal Election Commission has allowed political committees to accept bitcoin as contributions since 2014, with the value of the bitcoin determined by the price at the time the contribution is received.

Cryptocurrency was also a topic of discussion during a Silicon Valley’s recent fundraising blitz that Trump’s new running mate, the Ohio senator. JD Vancehelped organize. Billionaire tech entrepreneur David Sacks, a prominent cryptocurrency advocate, hosted one of the fundraisers at his home.

“One of the things I think we heard a lot at that dinner was just the difficulty that people in business were having under this Biden administration,” Sacks said on a recent episode of the “All-In Podcast,” which he co-hosts. “You have the crypto guys who just want a framework. They just want the government to tell them how to operate, and they’re not getting that.”

Industry leaders and advocates have become increasingly political, helping to fund super PACs that have overwhelmingly supported Republicans over Democrats.

“It’s time for the crypto army to send a message to Washington,” Tyler Winklevoss wrote in a far away social media publish supporting Trump. “That attacking us is political suicide.”

Eric Soufer, a political consultant for major cryptocurrency companies, said the crypto insiders who were ousted from power after the Bankman-Fried episode were “seeking political validation after years in the wilderness.”

“They believe that now is their moment, and it’s hard to resist someone who is telling them everything they want to hear,” Soufer said.

The cryptocurrency industry has been experiencing a resurgence since the FTX crash. After falling in 2022, the price of bitcoin has rebounded and hit an all-time high in June. The excitement surrounding this year’s Nashville event was palpable inside the Music City Center. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also spoke at the conference on Friday.

Still, many Americans have expressed concerns about cryptocurrency, even as more people are aware of it. Pew Research 2023 Survey found that nearly 9 in 10 adults had heard of cryptocurrencies, and 75% of those people did not believe they were safe or trustworthy.

But Trump’s courting of crypto voters is in line with other efforts to find new support in unconventional places. Earlier this year, Trump reached out to Libertarian Party members at their annual convention, where he promised to “support the right to self-custody for the nation’s 50 million cryptocurrency holders.” There is considerable overlap between libertarians and the crypto community.

It wasn’t hard to find Trump supporters at the Bitcoin Conference. John Fischer, a 61-year-old from Atlanta, has been personally investing in cryptocurrency since 2021. He voted for Trump in 2020 and plans to vote again.

Still, he was lucid about Trump’s attempts to woo conference attendees.

“Every politician is going to be for something if they want to get votes,” Fischer said.

Luke Broyles, a 25-year-old Michigan resident who works in the cryptocurrency industry, was also unsure about Trump’s latest appeals, despite his recent rhetoric.

“I think there’s a fair amount of skepticism that people have about bitcoin,” Broyles said. “I think that’s reasonable. At the end of the day, people are into bitcoin because they don’t trust politicians.”

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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