Donald Trump’s opposition to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies was unambiguous. During his presidential tenure, Trump said he was “not a fan”, adding that as far as he was concerned, Bitcoin seemed “like a scam.”
Now, a top executive at financial tech firm Block Inc. claims the ex-president almost banned Bitcoin back in 2020, but former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin dissuaded him.
“Trump tried to ban Bitcoin in 2020, until Steve Mnuchin and a group of people in the administration slow-walked his wishes, to preserve American competitiveness and innovation,” Mike Brock, the general manager of TBD at Block (formerly Square) posited in a bold post on the X platform. “I was invited to the meeting. And yes, I’m violating the confidence of those conversations.”
When asked whether he was suggesting people can’t change their minds regarding issues, Brock claimed Trump “doesn’t believe in anything but himself”. Members of the crypto Twitter community had cited MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor, who is a former crypto skeptic and now a major Bitcoin believer and investor.
In another post, Brock noted that Trump doesn’t care about Bitcoin, contending that the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee has “sized up a bunch of people who he saw as an easy fundraising and constituency win for him.” He added that should Trump reclaim the White House after the November election, he would “immediately begin the process of doing to them, what he’s done to every other constituency he’s courted: leaving them out to dry.”
The claims from Brock come amid a political discourse in the industry after Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin warned voters against picking candidates just because they have made superficial pro-crypto promises.
“If you see a politician being crypto-friendly, one thing you can do is look up their views on crypto itself five years ago,” Buterin posted on his blog Wednesday. “Crypto-friendly now does not mean crypto-friendly five years from now.”
Trump’s Brazen Flip-Flop On Crypto
Crypto has in recent months taken center stage in American politics to the point where Trump has completely backtracked on his previous anti-crypto position.
In July 2019, the ex-POTUS tweeted: “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.” Then in 2021, he called “Bitcoin is a scam against the dollar” during a Fox Business interview.
But earlier this year, Trump’s campaign started accepting donations in crypto and the presidential candidate has said he wants all the remaining Bitcoin to be made in America. That has led many in the cryptosphere to see Trump as the pro-crypto candidate with some industry experts saying voters are likely to choose Trump over Biden because of his crypto stance.
That being said, the odds of Trump winning the 2024 elections have rocketed over the past week following the weekend attempt on his life during a rally in Pennsylvania and after he picked crypto-friendly Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate. Vance currently holds as much as $250,000 in BTC.
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