During a phone interview on CNBC on March 11, former president Donald Trump told listeners that he was happy to receive Bitcoin.
The presumptive Republican party candidate for the President of the United States, Donald Trump, says that “at this point” he would leave crypto alone if he were re-elected. The former President told CNBC’s Squawk Box that one of his companies had gained a lot of experience in taking cryptocurrency from retail customers lately.
Trump said that when he launched his sneaker line, “I noticed that so many of them were paid for with this new currency … you know, cryptocurrency and I couldn’t believe the amount.” He claims that he has not bought any crypto himself, he says that sometimes people can pay through Bitcoin.
The digital dollar being worked on by the Treasury Department seems deigned to suffer a different fate, however. On February 4, Forbes published an article claiming that the former president owned about $3 million in Bitcoin. However, he stated while on the campaign trail in New Hampshire that Central Bank Digital Currencies such as the Digital Dollar were ‘very dangerous’ and that he would squash its development in the U.S. if re-elected.
“At this point”
Times change, so for former president Trump to put it this way is no surprise. However, given his recent turn regarding the Chinese-originated TikTok social media platform, the question of whether he has diamond hands is a non-starter. Trump mounted a vociferous campaign against TikTok when he was president, but with a substantial donor who is also part owner of TikTok as an increasingly close person, the tone has changed. So when Mr. Trump says, “At this point,” he is not lying.
Looking at Trump administration’s actions are not helpful in this regard. The landscape is significantly different now, with Bitcoin ETFs already in the U.S. and soon coming to the London markets as well.
One serious connection
There is one thing that Trump and his electorate agree upon that they do know the other is being completely honest about as well: that the Central Bank Digital Currencies are the work of the Devil. The amount of control over the money flows and account information that a CBDC offers a government – especially in a court case - can be considerable. The likelihood of a CBDC being made available to consumers and corporates is thus highly unlikely.
In a sense, then, Donald Trump has experienced the bright side of cryptocurrencies – he got paid by someone in crypto, and, probably, will remain friendly toward it until personally disturbed.
