Trump hitches his campaign to the crypto crowd
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Donald Trump this week pivoted to embrace a niche constituency that few would have expected him to champion—cryptocurrencies and the deep-pocketed investors who have made them their domain.
The former president and onetime bitcoin skeptic on Monday helped launch a new crypto business with his family. On Wednesday, he bought a round of burgers for denizens of a bitcoin-theme dive bar in New York.
Pledges to block a Federal Reserve-backed digital currency and establish a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile" stand out in stump speeches that mostly focus on such center of the plate political issues as immigration and trade. All of this has won him fervent support from a growing subset of single-issue voters—and wealthy donors—who say the government’s treatment of cryptocurrency will determine how they pull the lever on Election Day.
An industry often at odds with government has been invigorated by having a potential champion in the White House, said Dennis Porter, chief executive officer of Satoshi Action Fund, a bitcoin-backing nonprofit. “This is an industry full of voters who are getting wealthier and more influential, and now there’s someone who wants to be a voice for them," Porter said.
“They’re going to give him votes, and they’re going to give him money." While the value of those votes remains to be seen, the money has already proven helpful. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of the venture investor Andreessen Horowitz, said on a podcast in July that they were supporting Trump after he personally “rewrote the Republican National Committee platform" into what they called a “flat-out, blanket endorsement of the entire space." They have been joined in their support by
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