Donald Trump headlines Bitcoin Conference 2024, after a U-turn on crypto

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NASHVILLE — Former president Donald Trump headlines the biggest bitcoin conference of the year on Saturday afternoon, as the race to capture the votes and the campaign cash of America’s frontline fintech adopters takes center stage in the 2024 presidential contest.

The Republican presidential nominee will also host an accompanying fundraiser in Nashville, with tickets topping out at $844,600. In June, BTC Inc. CEO David Bailey, who organized the conference, pledged to raise $100 million and turn out more than 5,000,000 voters for the Trump re-election effort, as the bitcoin sector increasingly turns to the Trump camp for support.

Trump taking the main stage to directly address the bitcoin community is the latest in a months-long campaign to appeal to the crypto contingent, including accepting donations in virtual tokens, pledging to end President Joe Biden’s “war on crypto,” and advocating that all future bitcoin be made in America. It is also quite the about-face by the Republican presidential nominee.

Trump very publicly dismissed bitcoin when he was in the White House. In July 2019, he said he was “not a fan” of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He said that tokens aren’t money, that their value was “based on thin air,” and warned that unregulated crypto assets could help facilitate the drug trade, among “other illegal activity.”

“Bitcoin just seems like a scam,” he told Fox in a phone interview in 2021. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”

“I want the dollar to be the currency of the world, that’s what I’ve always said,” continued Trump in his conversation with Fox.

But five years, a lost presidential election, and millions of dollars from the crypto lobby later, the Republican presidential nominee is now headlining the biggest bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville, which kicked off on Thursday.

Trump’s shift on Bitcoin comes as the Republican Party pledges to lift the red tape of the Biden-Harris administration, working to turn crypto regulation into a voting issue for November, especially as inflation consistently ranks as a top voter priority in polls.

As crypto lobbyists and supporters become more of a presence in Washington, it raises questions on whether the Democratic Party will dig into the hardline regulatory approach of the past several years or ease its position.

“Every presidential candidate needs to understand, digital asset, pro-innovation voters are here to stay,” Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina told CNBC in an interview, adding that crypto regulation should not become a “partisan political football.”

“I want to keep this as a bipartisan issue. I don’t want Donald Trump to politicize this issue,” Rep. Nickel said.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Ca., echoed Rep. Nickel’s sentiment, saying that crypto should not turn into a partisan talking point but will require regulation like any technology.

“I don’t really see why it’s partisan. Being against bitcoin is like being against cell phones. It’s like being against AI. It’s like being against laptops,” Khanna told CNBC. “It’s a technology. Have thoughtful regulation on the technology, but it’s a technology that has appreciated from about $10,000 to $80,000.”

Reps. Khanna and Nickel were two of the only Democrats to attend the Bitcoin Conference.

Bitcoin 2024 conference organizers say they were briefly in talks to have Vice President Kamala Harris appear at the conference, though she ultimately declined. But billionaire businessman Mark Cuban posted on X that the Harris campaign had reached out with questions about crypto, so it appears the vice president is looking into this space and potentially figuring out where her policies, if elected president, could land.

“I think we’re going to hear from Vice President Harris soon on this. And I’m very optimistic we’re gonna get a reset. And that I think, will matter in a major way,” Rep. Nickel said. “This issue isn’t going anywhere. And we’ve got to make sure we continue to embrace this in bipartisan way.”

Harris’ team has already begun to reach out to people close to crypto companies to set up meetings, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

The recent thaw in Trump’s sentiment for the digital asset space has coincided with a sudden influx of interest and cash from the country’s top tech talent.

He has raised more than $4 million in a mix of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ether, the U.S. dollar pegged stablecoin USDC, and various memecoins, with contributors hailing from 12 states, including a few battlegrounds. 

Crypto billionaire twins and venture investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss led the charge, each contributing 15.57 bitcoin, or just over $1 million at the time of their donation, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission — though they received a partial refund, because contributions surpassed the $844,600 limit.

There are a number of other venture capitalists who are pro-crypto, and they’ve pledged millions to the Trump campaign, as well.

Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz told employees of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) that they plan to make significant donations to political action committees supporting  Trump’s campaign. The partners of Sequoia Capital are backing Trump, as is venture investor David Sacks, who helped the former president raise $12 million at a fundraiser he hosted in his San Francisco home. The chief legal officers for centralized crypto exchange Coinbase and blockchain giant Ripple were both there.

These members of the tech elite are also heavily contributing to pro-crypto super PACs like Fairshake, which has raised more than $200 million dollars to elect pro-crypto candidates up and down the ballot, and on both sides of the aisle.

But reporting from NBC News finds that the vice president’s team is looking to win over support from some of big tech’s undecided donors, many of whom remained on the sidelines while President Joe Biden remained in the race. Their tune may be changing now that the vice president is the de facto nominee for the party.

It helps that Harris has a long track record in California. 

She has been fundraising in the tech community for years, including from those working at Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Apple.

“The pivot that has occurred in the last three days is dramatic,” Steve Westly, a venture capitalist and one-time gubernatorial candidate for California, told NBC News. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a surge of enthusiasm in any campaign I’ve been involved with.” 

This comes as Trump’s running mate for vice president, JD Vance, is set to hold a fundraiser of his own in Palo Alto on Monday. 

— CNBC’s Rebecca Picciotto contributed to this report.