The denizens of cryptoland have erupted into celebration and gleeful told-you-so’s after Donald Trump, the self-styled “crypto president,” was voted back into the White House on Wednesday morning. Under the Democratic administration led by President Joe Biden, crypto companies have felt they were being singled out for persecution by US financial regulators and denied access to essential services like banking. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, the current vice president, was viewed by the crypto faithful as complicit by proximity and likely to replicate this strategy. (Harris never declared her intentions towards the crypto industry.) But a victory for Trump marks the start of a promising new chapter, they say.
“This election was completely existential for crypto in the US,” claims Nic Carter, a general partner at crypto-focused VC firm Castle Island Ventures. “The first [response] is relief. We have been trying to build businesses with one hand tied behind our backs. I can’t emphasize how hard that is.” Under Trump, the industry expects a far friendlier reception from regulators, says Carter, as well as legislation that sets out specific rules for crypto firms. And if Trump incorporates bitcoin into the US government’s balance sheet, advocates speculate it could stoke demand for bitcoin among other world powers, thereby further inflating the price, which rose to record heights after Trump’s victory was confirmed. In short, to them, everything is coming up Milhouse.
“Just ceasing the hostilities would have been immensely positive, but we got something better: a candidate that is overtly pro-crypto,” says Carter. “Last night could not have gone any better.” Some of crypto’s largest companies—among them crypto exchange Coinbase and stablecoin issuer Circle—have insisted during the 2024 election cycle that crypto need not become a partisan issue. But crypto figureheads largely lined up behind the Republican candidate: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, cofounders of crypto platform Gemini, each donated $1 million to Trump, as did Jesse Powell, cofounder of the Kraken exchange. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, whose VC firm a16z has invested billions of dollars in crypto startups, publicly endorsed Trump for the presidency.
“We are on the brink of a new American Renaissance,” wrote Tyler Winklevoss in a post on X, after it became clear that Trump had beaten Harris. On the campaign trail, Trump went out of his way to court their favor. In July, speaking to thousands of bitcoiners at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump duly sang from the bitcoin hymn sheet, promising to cement the US as the foremost bitcoin mining powerhouse, establish a national “bitcoin stockpile,” and appoint a bitcoin advisory council if reelected. Trump claimed he would turn the US into the “crypto capital of the planet.” In October, Trump went as far as to launch his own crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, which his family members have touted as an expert Tech journalist.
