“If you support cryptocurrency, you better vote for Trump.”
Former US President Trump has recently been playing the "crypto card" through a series of words and deeds to increase his campaign chips.
Forcing the passage of the spot Ethereum ETF, accepting cryptocurrency donations, ensuring that the future of the crypto revolution takes place in the United States, releasing the founder of Silk Road, and considering pardoning WikiLeaks founder Assange are all Trump's latest campaign weapons.
So, can Trump, who plays the "crypto card", win over American voters to defeat Biden in the general election? Will his promises about cryptocurrency be just empty promises? Will he win?
1. Trump plays the "encryption" card to win voters
1. Campaign pressure forces spot Ethereum ETF to pass and accept crypto donations
On May 8, 2024, Trump told cryptocurrency supporters at Mar-a-Lago that due to the Biden administration's regulatory crackdown on the industry, "If you support cryptocurrency, you better vote for Trump."
On May 21, 2024, the Trump 2024 campaign team announced that it would accept donations in cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, GOGE, SOL, SHIB, XRP, USDC and ZRX.
Perhaps feeling the political pressure from Trump's campaign, the US SEC under Biden's leadership took a 180-degree turn towards spot Ethereum ETFs, approving the 19b-4 filings of all eight spot Ethereum ETFs on May 23.
2. Release the Silk Road founder
Trump appeared at the Libertarian Party National Convention on May 25, 2024, intending to win over American libertarians. He promised to commute the life sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht to a prison sentence if he was re-elected president. The remarks drew loud cheers from the audience, many of whom held signs that read "Free Ross."
3. Ensure the future of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin happens in the United States
On May 25, 2024, also at the Libertarian Party National Convention, Trump said, “I will ensure that the future of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin happens in the United States, rather than being driven overseas. I will support the self-custody rights of 50 million cryptocurrency holders in the country. I say this only if you vote for me, so that I can keep Elizabeth Warren and her people away from your Bitcoin. I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency.”
On the same day, Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social: “I am very positive and open to cryptocurrency companies and everything related to this emerging industry. Our country must take the lead in this field, and there is no second place. On the contrary, Joe Biden is the worst president in the history of our country. He hopes that cryptocurrency will die slowly and painfully.”
4. Consider pardoning Assange
On May 27, 2024, Trump revealed in an interview with Timcast IRL that if elected president, he would "very seriously consider" pardoning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
2. Can Trump win more votes by playing the encryption card?
On March 14, 2024, a poll released by Paradigm showed that 19% of registered American voters had purchased cryptocurrencies. Paradigm's poll further showed that cryptocurrency holders are more supportive of Trump, with Trump's approval rating (48%) beating Biden's approval rating (39%), and 13% have not yet decided. In addition, cryptocurrency ownership rates are higher among people of color and young people, which is crucial to the situation in the "swing states."
Due to their competitive nature, swing states receive a great deal of attention and campaign resources from both parties during elections. Overall, this data suggests that cryptocurrency owners are a swing voting group in their own right, one that could prove decisive if the election is another close race.
According to the DGC survey, 26% of respondents said they are concerned about candidates’ stances on cryptocurrencies, and 21% said cryptocurrencies are an important issue to consider during the upcoming election.
Respondents’ overall stance on cryptocurrencies may be attributed to a sense of overregulation: 55% worry that policymakers will stifle innovation through excessive regulation.
3. Industry insiders’ criticism of Trump
Ethereum co-founder and Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson: The Trump administration "largely ignored" the cryptocurrency industry, while the "Biden administration has taken a concerted action to kill cryptocurrencies."
Monica Taher, former director of technology and business innovation for the El Salvador government, said cryptocurrencies “are being used by some opportunistic politicians to advance their own status and present themselves as innovators.
Adam Cochran, partner at Cinneamhain Ventures: Trump has a "decades-long history of selling out" and "selling out others for his own benefit."
Alexander Bloom, partner at Prime Hedge Fund: Trump "has a record of making promises to desperate people/groups for his own ends and then not delivering on those promises."
4. Trump-themed Meme Coins Rise
AssangeDAO: Influenced by the news that Trump is considering pardoning Assange, AssangeDAO's token JUSTICE has risen more than 10 times since May 26.
FreeRossDAO: On May 26, influenced by the news that Trump would pardon the creator of "Silk Road", the FreeRossDAO token FREE soared all the way, with the highest increase of more than 25 times on that day. Although it has fallen back recently, it is still more than 5 times the price before the increase on May 26.
TRUMP: On May 9, Trump-themed meme coin MAGA (TRUMP) began to soar, rising to more than $13, and its market value once exceeded $600 million.
V. Appendix
1. Who is Assange?
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian journalist and activist who founded the whistleblower website WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks published a series of declassified events provided by Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, in 2010, which attracted international attention.
On November 30, 2010, at the request of the International Public Prosecutor's Office in Sweden, Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Assange on suspicion of sexual crimes. On December 7, Assange surrendered to the London Metropolitan Police, but he denied the charges. On June 19, 2012, Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK to seek political asylum while on bail. In August of the same year, Assange was granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government and lived in the embassy for nearly seven years.
Before becoming the spokesperson and editor of WikiLeaks, Assange was a physics and mathematics student, programmer, and hacker. He has moved from one country to another, living in a nomadic place, occasionally appearing in public to express his views on press freedom, censorship, and investigative journalism.
On April 4, 2019, WikiLeaks posted a message on Twitter from a senior Ecuadorian government official saying that Assange would be expelled on the pretext of a scandal and that an agreement had been reached with the UK to arrest him.
On April 11, 2019, the London Metropolitan Police said it had obtained permission from staff at the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK to enter the embassy and arrest Julian Assange.
On May 23, 2019, the U.S. government further charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Editors of newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as press freedom organizations, criticized the government's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act and described it as an attack on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press.
On December 10, 2021, the UK Supreme Court in London ruled that Assange could be extradited to the United States to face charges.
On July 1, 2022, Assange announced a formal appeal against the extradition order.
On May 20, 2024, the UK High Court again heard Assange's extradition appeal.
2. Assange and cryptocurrency
(1) Assange has received a large amount of cryptocurrency donations
On April 11, 2019, Assange shouted "You must resist, you can resist" when he was arrested by the police at the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK. The incident instantly caused a strong reaction in the cryptocurrency community. Within 24 hours of the incident, the Bitcoin address officially published by Wikipedia received hundreds of BTC donations, with a total transaction amount of more than 40,000 US dollars. On the same day, almost all of the top 100 currencies in terms of market value showed a downward trend, with Bitcoin falling by more than 6% in a single day.
Since 2010, WikiLeaks has successively released war diaries in Afghanistan, records of the Iraq war, and tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables. On December 5, 2010, the U.S. government stopped all donation channels from traditional finance such as credit cards and bank cards. In order to keep the website running and continue to speak out for justice, passers-by who know about Bitcoin and related communities began to call on WikiLeaks to accept Bitcoin donations to break the financial blockade. This proposal was strongly opposed by Satoshi Nakamoto at the time; and the coincidence that Satoshi Nakamoto left his last post casually and disappeared from Bitcointalk a week after the incident made many people suspect that the WikiLeaks incident was the catalyst that prompted Satoshi Nakamoto to leave the project early.
The donated Bitcoins have brought Assange hundreds of times the returns. During the Bitcoin bull market in 2017, Assange challenged the US government on Twitter, saying that he was grateful for their financial closure of WikiLeaks, otherwise WikiLeaks would not have started using and investing in Bitcoin, and received a return of more than 500 times in a few years.
(2) Assange and NFT auctions
On February 10, 2022, AssangeDAO, named after WikiLeaks founder Assange, won part of Julian Assange x Pak's NFT series Censored, namely Clock, for 1,593 ETH (worth approximately US$53 million).
Clock is a standalone NFT, the prototype of which is a silent timer that counts the number of days Assange has spent in prison. The proceeds raised from the sale of the NFT will be used to pay Assange's legal fees and donated to the Wau Holland Foundation, which defends Julian Assange. In addition, AssangeDAO's JUSTICE governance tokens can be claimed by donors at Juicebox.
On the morning of February 9, AssangeDAO ended its fundraising on Juicebox, raising a total of 17,422 ETH.
