Trump promises establishment of a strategic bitcoin reserve for the US at bitcoin conference

Former US President Donald Trump promised to build a strategic bitcoin reserve for the US at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on Saturday. The main address of the Republican presidential candidate followed a week of increasing rumors and reports on the issue.

– As the final part of my plan today, I announce that if I am elected, the policy of my administration, the United States, will be to hold 100 percent of all bitcoins that the US government currently holds or acquires in the future – said Trump.

Immediately after that, Senator Cynthia Lummis announced specific details of her own proposal for a strategic bitcoin reserve, with a press release stating that the US will establish a decentralized network of secure bitcoin vaults managed by the US Department of the Treasury, and will seek to acquire a total of one million bitcoins over five years.

The promise to establish a national bitcoin reserve and hold all bitcoin currently held by the US government through seizures rounded off a roughly 45-minute main address in which Trump promised to end the Democrats’ regulatory assault on crypto companies and users. If elected, Trump will reshape the US into a ‘bitcoin superpower’, he said.

– I am laying out my plan to ensure that the US will be the crypto capital of the planet – Trump said in a packed conference hall, which erupted in applause.

He warned that the regulatory blockades that plagued crypto companies under the Biden administration would continue to stifle innovation in the state under the administration of his likely Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.

– If the Democrats win this election, you will all be gone. They will be malicious. They will be ruthless – Trump told the audience.

During his speech, the 78-year-old politician used popular crypto slang, promising to send bitcoin ‘to the moon’. He also mentioned well-known talking points in the industry such as the importance of self-custody of cryptocurrencies to promote personal freedom and privacy, two values that bitcoin advocates consider key to the ethos of the broader bitcoin movement.

Trump hardly spoke about crypto when he first took the stage at 10 PM our time, about an hour later.

In his opening remarks, Trump touched on a dizzying array of seemingly unrelated, non-crypto topics: the recent attack on Israel, the political leanings of country musician Billy Ray Cyrus’s daughter, and the death of firefighter Corey Comperatore, who was killed by a stray bullet during an assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania two weeks ago.

In the first few minutes of his speech, Trump also mentioned the names of about a dozen celebrities and politicians who supported him at the conference, including internet personality Jake Paul and musician Kid Rock. He gave special recognition to David Bailey, the main organizer of the conference.

Trump’s plan for a bitcoin strategic reserve echoed a policy proposal that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supported on Friday in a speech targeting Trump’s changing stance on cryptocurrencies. Trump called bitcoin a ‘scam’ in a Fox News interview back in 2021, adding that he did not like the asset because it was another currency competing with the dollar.

But in his latest speech, Trump left little room for doubt about his stance on bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency industry ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

The statement that received perhaps the most enthusiasm from the audience was when Trump repeated twice that on the first day he becomes president, he will fire the current SEC chairman Garry Gensler.