NASHVILLE — Charlene Brown arrived at the first full day of Bitcoin 2024 at the Music City Center convention complex with two signs in hand: “Orange Man Good” and “Bitcoin Don.” 

Similar symbols of a recent and sudden shift in the politics of bitcoin could be spotted elsewhere in the Nashville crowd. “Make Bitcoin Great Again” caps — not to mention knockoff “Make America Great Again” hats that eventually were seized by organizers for violating conference rules — dotted the convention hall as the year’s biggest bitcoin event got rolling. 

Brown, who publishes Tokens Magazine, a pro-cryptocurrency publication, was perhaps the most visibly pro-Trump bitcoin advocate at the Nashville confab.

“I love that we now have a president who supports Bitcoin,” said Brown, referring to former President Donald Trump. “Now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon,” she said. 

Interviews with others in attendance confirmed a clear, if less outwardly apparent, support of the former president. 

Bitcoin Conference, a long-running event centered around the most popular cryptocurrency, has taken on national significance virtually overnight thanks to Trump’s recent embrace of bitcoin. Starting Friday and running through the weekend, the schedule is dotted with GOP power players.

Trump is slated to deliver an address on Saturday, just weeks after he officially made supporting cryptocurrencies an official plank of the GOP’s platform. He will be preceded by one current and three prospective Republican elected officials: South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Pennsylvania Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, Nevada Senate candidate Sam Brown and Massachusetts Senate candidate John Deaton.  

Plenty of other high-profile Republicans are scheduled to speak, including former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Sens. Marsha Blackburn, Bill Hagerty and Cynthia Lummis. Representative Ro Khanna of California was the only high-profile Democrat on the agenda.  

The speaker list reflects the growing coterie of the crypto world and tech writ large that has taken a hard-right turn. Other prominent crypto investors now backing Trump include Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, co-founders of Gemini crypto exchange; and Elon Musk, a longtime crypto fan who has also begun aggressively backing the GOP candidate. 

The conference also welcomed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is making a third-party run for president. He pledged to build a reserve of 4 million bitcoins — worth about $272 billion as of Friday — if elected.

Some in the GOP have also floated building a U.S. bitcoin reserve, pitching it as akin to the government’s strategic reserves of oil and other precious commodities.

It’s day two of Nashville’s Bitcoin Conference, but many attendees are waiting for day three.

The reason? Saturday (July 27), at 2 p.m., is when U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will give a keynote address to the conference.

The former president and current hopeful, who once dismissed bitcoin as a “scam” competing against the U.S. dollar, is now positioning himself as a proponent of the crypto industry.

Trump has already raised more than $4 million in crypto for his campaign war chest, and the crypto audience represents an attractive and lucrative voting bloc, particularly given their ongoing disillusionment with the current state of existing domestic digital asset policy.

A free T-shirt being offered to attendees of the conference reads “Vote Trump.”

Per a Barron’s report, the prevailing sentiment among certain bitcoin investors and enthusiasts is that Trump will use his speech to make a major announcement, something along the lines of throwing his support behind having the U.S. government buy bitcoin as a “strategic reserve” asset, akin to foreign currencies, or oil.

Central banks’ investment in bitcoin would lend credibility to cryptocurrency, potentially elevating it to a status similar to gold in terms of being a store of value. Any such move could have a far-ranging influence on discussions around digital currencies and monetary sovereignty.

Trump, who has pitched himself as the “crypto president,” isn’t the only politician speaking at the crypto festival. Republican former candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and lawmakers from both parties — including Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming — are also slated to speak.

See also: Trump Running Mate J.D. Vance’s Antitrust Views Divide Business Leaders

Crypto Industry Looks to Increase Beltway Influence

Trump’s rebranding as a crypto-friendly candidate is part of a larger trend among Republicans to embrace digital currencies and blockchain technology. This strategy aims not only to attract a young and tech-savvy demographic but also to tap into the substantial financial resources of the crypto sector. By aligning with the interests of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, Trump and his party are seeking to leverage the political and economic potential of this burgeoning industry.

Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has maintained a positive view on the digital asset sector throughout his political career, and voted as a senator accordingly.

The Republican Party’s platform states that the GOP will “end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown” and “defend the right to mine Bitcoin.”

And as PYMNTS wrote earlier this month, the need for clear regulatory frameworks remains one of the most pressing issues facing the crypto industry.

“What we are seeing, where it’s the UK, Japan, Singapore … even the European Union, more than two dozen countries have come together to provide a framework for crypto regulation,” Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse said last week (July 17). “It’s frustrating that we as a country can’t get that framework in place. And instead, we have this interminable litigation coming from the SEC that really isn’t solving the problem.”

Ripple earlier this year donated $25 million to the crypto industry super PAC Fairshake, with Garlinghouse saying at the time that those donations would continue each year, as long as the sector had its naysayers.

Read more: Blockchain’s Benefits for Regulated Industries

As the 2024 elections approach, the cryptocurrency sector is poised to play an increasingly significant role in American politics, across both parties.

Per a Politico report on Tuesday (July 23), billionaire investor and bitcoin enthusiast Mark Cuban believes that Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris would be “far more open” to crypto, though he noted that was “certainly not confirmed by the VP.”

Potentially contributing to the more mainstream embrace of crypto is the fact that institutions are starting to warm up to digital assets, too.

Coinbase Asset Management is reportedly creating a tokenized money market fund, while asset manager BlackRock introduced a tokenization of real-world assets: a fund called BUIDL that holds U.S. Treasurys and gained $500 million of assets following its launch in March.

The tokenization of real-world assets is a function of the blockchain landscape that has captured the imagination of various players across payments, finance and commerce, PYMNTS reported in April.

As PYMNTS Intelligence’s latest report revealed, regulated industries, including healthcare and financial services, must adhere to numerous requirements, such as know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML) and data privacy regulations. Blockchain could help these industries in that regard.

Topline

Former president and one-time bitcoin detractor Donald Trump will speak at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee, this weekend alongside other political figures, looking to further his rebrand as a “crypto president” ahead of Election Day.

Key Facts

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Surprising Fact

Edward Snowden, the whistleblower behind one of the largest classified documents leaks in the history of the National Security Agency, is expected to speak Friday from Russia, and has called the cryptocurrency “the most significant monetary advance since the creation of coinage.”

Tangent

Bitcoin traded down more than 2% at just under $65,000 Thursday afternoon, having mostly plateaued in the last three months, posting gains of a fraction of a percent. It has surged more than 53% since the start of the year.

Big Number

$1.8 million. That is how many dollars worth of bitcoin Trump supporters donated to the Republican nominee through the end of June, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Key Background

The bitcoin conference has historically been used by public figures and companies as an event to announce partnerships and initiatives. In 2021, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, announced at the event that the country would be making bitcoin a legal tender. Attendance has been inconsistent in recent years, as 25,000 people appeared at the convention in 2022 (when the crypto market experienced one of its worst crashes ever) and 12,000 attended in 2023, according to Bloomberg. Bitcoin 2024 has yet to share attendance numbers, though big-name speakers like Trump could generate more tickets than prior years.

What Has Donald Trump Said About Bitcoin?

Trump has increasingly warmed up to cryptocurrency as Election Day draws closer, ditching the skepticism he had for it years ago. While president in 2019 he said he was not a fan of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, calling their values “highly volatile and based on thin air” in a tweet. He also told Fox News in 2021 bitcoin “just seems like a scam,” saying he did not like it “because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.” Since then, Trump has embraced cryptocurrency, allowing supporters to donate to his campaign with bitcoin and selecting a running mate in JD Vance, R-Ohio, who supports and owns at least $100,000 worth of bitcoin. The cryptocurrency market may benefit from Trump winning in November, with bitcoin remaining “sensitive” to the election as its price is “positively correlated with the probability” of a Trump victory, according to Bernstein analysts led by Gautam Chhugani. Trump’s Democratic challenger, Vice President Kamala Harris, is likely to adopt the regulation-centric crypto policies of her former running mate, President Joe Biden.

Further Reading

Billionaire Winklevoss Twins Donate $2 Million In Bitcoin To Support Donald Trump (Forbes)

Are Trump And Vance Good For Bitcoin? Here’s Why The Market Thinks So—Even Though Trump’s Called It A ‘Scam.’ (Forbes)