Former President and 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump has been using his recently declared pro-Bitcoin stance as a means of winning over the crypto industry, and it appears to be working.
Several key industry figures have since announced that they will be backing Trump in the upcoming presidential election. This includes the founder of Kraken, the founders of Gemini, and David Bailey, the Bitcoin Magazine CEO.
A number of crypto analysts have also highlighted how a Trump victory could benefit the crypto market. Despite Bitcoin’s recent slump, commentators such as Alex Krüger have argued that a Trump victory could help crypto recover from its current slump.
Trump wasn’t pro-crypto during his four years as president. In the meantime, he may have realized the benefits of Bitcoin investing. As Michael Graw highlights in this best Bitcoin casinos, blockchain fees are lower than traditional banking fees. Plus, Bitcoin can be deposited and withdrawn at a much faster rate than fiat currency can. This not only applies to crypto gambling sites but all crypto platforms.
Since the end of his term, Trump has invested in Ethereum and reportedly made $4.5 million from his NFT collection in a single day. So, there’s a good chance that Trump now finally sees the benefits of crypto.
Whatever the reason for Trump’s Bitcoin U-turn, the pro-crypto posts he shared on his Truth Social account last month have inspired widespread backing throughout the cryptocurrency industry.
One notable backer is Jesse Powell, the co-founder and CEO of Kraken. A few weeks after Trump’s Bitcoin announcement, Powell posted on X – formally known as Twitter – that he had donated $1 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) to Trump. In the post, he also described Trump as the “only pro-crypto major party candidate”.
Powell’s backing of Trump could simply be down to the idea that Trump could introduce more robust and fair crypto regulations if elected president.
However, another issue that’s important to Powell is the ‘#freeross’ campaign, a hashtag that Powell included in his endorsement post.
This relates to the sentencing of Ross Ulbricht who, in 2015, received a double life prison sentence and forty years without parole for his involvement in Silk Road. This was an online black market that was often described as a “digital bazaar”. In Silk Road, Bitcoin was frequently traded for drugs.
Trump pledged in June that, if elected, he would convert his sentence to time served. Powell is one of many crypto figures who feel that Ulbricht’s sentence was disproportionate to his crimes. A Change.org petition supporting the #freeross campaign has gained nearly 600,000 signatures.
Besides Powell, the founders of the Gemini exchange platform, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, have stated that they’ll back Trump in the upcoming election. David Bailey also announced that Bitcoin Magazine would be helping Trump to formulate his crypto agenda.
Elsewhere in the world of finance, David Sacks, the tech entrepreneur and one of the first investors in Solana (SOL), has recently backed Trump. The former PayPal COO, who is worth $200 million, recently held a Trump fundraiser where he charged guests $300,000 each.
