Trump courts crypto industry votes and campaign donations

Donald Trump has told one of the largest cryptocurrency events of the year that if he is re-elected president he will fire the chairperson of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the first day.

Trump was the keynote speaker at Bitcoin 2024 on Saturday, a gathering of industry heavyweights in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Republican presidential candidate used the event to court voters and encourage campaign donations from the tech community.

Cryptocurrency has emerged as a political battleground for Republicans, with Trump claiming the Democratic Party and Vice-President Kamala Harris were “against crypto”.

The audience was at its most animated when Trump declared “on day one I will fire Gary Gensler”, the SEC chair nominated by current President Joe Biden. The crowd cheered loudly and started to chant “Trump” at this declaration.

Mr Gensler led a crackdown on the crypto industry, and has previously said the sector is rife with “hucksters”.

The SEC brought charges against the “King of Crypto” Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years for stealing billions of dollars from customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

Speaking for about 45 minutes, Trump outlined some of his ideas for the sector if he were to win November’s election. He said he would make the US the cryptocurrency capital of the world. His support for the industry is a 180 turn from his comments in 2021, when he told Fox Business he saw Bitcoin as a “scam” affecting the value of the US dollar.

Trump told the crowd at the event he would keep 100% of Bitcoin that the US government currently holds or acquires, adding that it would be a “national Bitcoin stockpile”.

The former president also said he would “immediately appoint a Bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council”.