Crypto will never be the same.
Donald Trump, the former president who embraced Bitcoin and its ilk this spring and even launched his own fledgling DeFi protocol, has made big promises to the industry.
Now that he is appears close to defeating Vice President Kamala Harris at the polls, his supporters in the crypto market will expect him to deliver.
But for now, Bitcoin bros couldn’t be happier that he’s simply nearing victory.
“All of the libs clutching their pearls about the pro-crypto lobby were right,” Nic Carter, a prominent crypto investors, wrote early Wednesday morning on X. “We are to be feared. We will do it again next cycle.”
Bitcoin surged almost 10 percent between Tuesday and Wednesday morning and hit an all-time high of $74,139 in early morning trading UK time.
Not called yet
Still, while the Associated Press has called key swing states Georgia and North Carolina, Trump doesn’t officially have a second term in the bag.
Officials are still counting votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, a suite of states often dubbed the “Blue Wall” for their tendency to swing for the Democrats.
The Associated Press has not yet called the four states for Trump, but, as of early Wednesday morning, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are all leaning towards the former president, according to The New York Times.
President Joe Biden won all three states in his election bid in 2020. Harris does not have a path towards victory without a repeat of Biden’s wins in the Midwest.
Bitcoin 2024
If Trump follows through on projections, he’ll augur in a friendly regime change for crypto in the White House.
Reversing long-held doubts about cryptocurrencies, Trump gave the keynote address at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, in July.
The Republican leader got cheers from a packed auditorium when he vowed to sack Gary Gensler, the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission who has been cracking down on the industry.
And he promised to create a strategic reserve of Bitcoin holdings to augment the Federal Reserve.
Casting Bitcoin as a piece of his “America First” agenda, Trump said he would make the US a “Bitcoin superpower.” In one fell swoop, he made crypto a serious campaign issue in the 2024 election.
90-year-old laws
“If you’re in favour of crypto you’re gonna vote for Trump,” said the former president during an event at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
The industry believed him.
For stalwarts such as Coinbase, Ripple, and Kraken — each of which has been sued by the SEC — Trump was a tonic.
For years, they and other crypto leaders have been pleading with lawmakers in Washington for legislation that would recognise the industry’s exceptionalism and regulate it with tailor-made rules.
Instead, they were saddled with Gensler who vowed to make them comply with 90-year-old laws designed to regulate stocks and bonds.
Wall of cash
With Trump, they’d found a political leader who appeared ready to give them whatever they wanted.
No surprise, those companies, along with venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz and the Winklevoss brothers, staked a political action committee called Fairshake with funds to support like-minded candidates from both parties in the 2024 campaign.
According to Follow the Crypto, a campaign contribution tracker, Fairshake raised more than $162 million.
Through the sheer force of cash, crypto became a talking point on both Harris’ and Trump’s platforms, and both candidates signalled a willingness to engage with, rather than shun, the industry’s top executives.
Whether it was the money or Trump’s embrace of crypto, the Harris campaign quickly distanced itself from the Biden administration and showed signs it was open to a reset with the industry.
Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor and Harris supporter, advised the Harris team on crypto issues, as did Anthony Scaramucci, the hedge fund manager and onetime Trump White House aide who also supported the Democratic candidate.
For Trump, crypto became another product he could slap his name on. He hawked a limited line of high-top gold sneakers sporting a Bitcoin symbol and the words “Trump crypto president” for $500 a pair.
And in September, Trump and his sons launched a token issuance for their own fledgling DeFi platform: World Liberty Financial, which is purportedly a stablecoin issuer. Sizing up its plan, though, many in DeFi found the venture “megacringe.”
Promises made
Now that the election is almost over, attention will turn to Trump’s picks to run the regulatory agencies, who will set the tone for his administration’s stance on crypto.
One common way for presidents to do this is by releasing executive orders. So, in a Trump presidency, an executive order could be issued to instruct the federal government to foster innovation, including crypto.
Trump will also appoint the heads of agencies like the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. At the moment, the terms of both officials end in 2026 though it is common for them to resign if their agendas clash with that of an incoming commander in chief.
After Trump became president in 2017, his picks to lead these agencies weren’t MAGA extremists, but often well-regarded former businesspeople or lawyers with impressive CVs.
They included former CFTC Chair Heath Tarbert and former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, both of whom went on to work in the crypto industry. Tarbert is chief legal officer and head of corporate affairs at Circle, and Clayton has advised the industry.
Joanna Wright is DL News’ regulatory correspondent, and Ben Weiss is DL News’ Dubai-based correspondent. Contact Joanna at joanna@dlnews.com, and reach out to Ben at bweiss@dlnews.com.
