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Donald Trump courted bitcoin enthusiasts by calling himself the “crypto president.”
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The industry hopes his second term will bring regulatory changes and give bitcoin a role in the economy.
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Trump’s policies could increase the market capitalization of the entire asset class, Standard Chartered said.
Donald Trump went from bitcoin cynic to ‘crypto president’ and it paid off big time.
Trump discredited digital assets only a few years ago by describing bitcoin as a scam, and yet his latest election victory was fueled in no small part by crypto-friendly pledges that freed up millions in campaign funding.
With Trump returning to the White House, it is now the industry’s turn to see whether its bets on a second term have paid off. This is what they want to see.
One of the main themes of Trump’s crypto platform is the promise to push aside the regulatory restrictions that have hung over the sector in recent years.
There has been loud criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the sector, which has been characterized by heated confrontations between the Securities and Exchange Commission and major crypto players.
“Those guys, I mean, they brought so much uncertainty to this whole industry. It was unbelievable. There were no clear guidelines, no rules,” said Tim Kravchunovsky, CEO of Chirp, a decentralized telecommunications company.
Speaking to Business Insider, he added that regulatory conflicts have driven the crypto industry out of the US, causing Washington to lose its competitive advantage.
Matt Mena, crypto research strategist at 21Shares, agreed with that sentiment.
“By creating a more welcoming regulatory environment, this approach could draw back projects and founders who have left the country due to regulatory uncertainty, generating thousands of new jobs and millions in tax revenue, strengthening the economy while boosting the crypto sector can be promoted,” he said. BI via email.
Given this, the industry expects Trump to replace regulators with more crypto-friendly people. The president-elect is already surrounded by such figures, Mena said, such as Elon Musk, JD Vance, Robert F. Kennedy and Howard Lutnick.
To facilitate Trump’s plan to turn the US into a “crypto hub,” Kravchunovsky suggested that Washington could offer incentives such as federal subsidies and tax cuts in the meantime.
On the legislative front, crypto players will also look forward to the repeal of SAB 121 and the passage of several major bills.
SAB 121, an SEC policy document enforced by the Biden administration, discourages US lenders from acting as crypto custodians as it requires them to maintain an equivalent amount of cash against their crypto holdings. Its abolition would free institutional investors to further adopt digital assets.
