Former President Donald Trump outlined his plans to accelerate the growth of cryptocurrencies and make the United States a crypto mining powerhouse during a keynote speech at the 2024 Nashville Bitcoin Conference on Saturday.
Trump announced that if elected, he would create a strategic Bitcoin reserve in the U.S. “It will be the policy of my Administration to retain 100% of all Bitcoin currently held or acquired by the United States Government as the core of a national strategic Bitcoin reserve,” he said.
Currently, the U.S. government holds over 210,000 Bitcoins, seized from illegal activities such as the online black market Silk Road and the Ponzi scheme BitConnect, and is worth approximately $14 billion at the time of writing.
The move confirmed rumors spread by bitcoin enthusiasts who hoped that President Trump’s support for reserves could boost the cryptocurrency’s price.
President Trump also announced plans to appoint an advisory committee on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, whose task will be to “develop transparent regulatory guidelines that will benefit the industry” within the next 100 days of his presidency. President Trump said he wants to make the U.S. the “cryptocurrency capital of the world.”
President Trump also promised to create a framework to ensure the safe expansion of stablecoins “so that we can extend the dominance of the U.S. dollar to other parts of the world,” and doubled down on his pledge to abandon any efforts to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC), or digital dollar, stating “there will never be a CBDC while I am President of the United States.”
“I will always be an advocate for self-custody,” he told a jubilant crowd. Perhaps the loudest cheers came when he promised on his first day to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler.
“The moment I am sworn in, the persecution will stop, the weaponization of your industry will end,” he said, naming Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as the industry’s nemesis.
He promised to create friendly regulations for cryptocurrency mining operations in the U.S. so that workers don’t have to “move to China.” Trump again promised to free Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a life sentence for his involvement in Silk Road, an underground online marketplace where people could buy illegal drugs and other goods until it was shut down in 2013.
The audience was expecting the announcement of a Bitcoin strategic reserve: On July 22, Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming posted on X that she had “big things coming up this week…” This was two days before Fox Business reported that she would be “announcing legislation for a Bitcoin strategic reserve” at the conference.
Shortly after Trump left the room, Lammis appeared before the crowd and announced the Bitcoin Reserve Act he had been drafting as a “present for President Donald Trump.”
“This is our Louisiana Purchase moment,” she said, explaining that the bill “brings bitcoin into the reserves that President Trump mentioned earlier, and this is just the beginning.”
“The United States will collect 1 million bitcoin over five years,” she added. “This represents 5% of the world’s bitcoin, to be held for a minimum of 20 years and used for one purpose: to reduce debt.”
