Cryptocurrencies surged after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, as crypto investors hope for a more friendly regulatory regime under a Republican president. Flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin briefly surpassed $75,000; other tokens like Ether and Dogecoin saw significant gains.
Trump’s election creates “a real opportunity for a crypto golden age,” said Charles Cascarilla, CEO and co-founder of Paxos, a New York-based blockchain platform, on Friday at the Singapore Fintech Festival. “The Trump campaign had a real crypto theme around it, and there’s a sense all this pent-up demand could be unleashed by the U.S. and turn the U.S. into a leader from kind of a laggard,” he explained.
The Republican campaign promoted Trump as a crypto-friendly candidate, accepting donations in cryptocurrency. Trump said at a bitcoin conference in July in Nashville that he would ensure the U.S. never sells off its Bitcoin holdings if he returned to the White House, and that it would be a policy in his administration to keep 100% of the Bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires in future. He also said he would establish a crypto presidential advisory council and create a national “stockpile” of bitcoin.
A Reuters report in August, citing data from Arkham Intelligence, claimed the U.S. holds about $11.1 billion in crypto, which includes 203,239 bitcoin tokens. Washington's stash of cryptocurrencies come from criminal seizures from government agencies like the FBI and IRS.
Trump also launched World Liberty Financial, a “decentralised finance” initiative centred around a crypto token called WLFI in September. In October, World Liberty Financial revealed it was slashing its fundraising goal in a regulatory filing. The company now plans to raise up to $30 million from investors, a 90% reduction from its initial target of $300 million.
Other speakers on Friday suggested that the U.S. was already moving towards a more crypto-friendly stance.
Eric Anziani, president of Crypto.com, said "a clear direction was set” when Bitcoins and Ethereum ETFs were approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year. The approved ETFs included funds from well-known investment firms like BlackRock, Fidelity, and Invesco.
Global regulators are also starting to treat crypto as a more mainstream asset. Richard Teng, CEO of Binance, pointed to new Bitcoin ETFs in markets like Hong Kong, Australia and Canada.
Yet “the election [marks] the beginning of a new era,” Anziani said.
A new Trump election could give more clarity on cryptocurrency regulations. The size of the U.S. market could then jumpstart the crypto industry, Cascarilla argued.
Billionaires with ties to the cryptocurrency industry, including Elon Musk and the Winklevoss twins, had endorsed or donated to Trump’s campaign
Crypto firms have blasted Gary Gensler, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, for cracking down on U.S.-based cryptocurrency firms. Investors now hope that a new Trump administration will replace Gensler with someone more friendly to the crypto sector.
“The SEC for the past few years has been waging a war on [the crypto] industry,” Monica Long, president of Ripple, said on Friday. “It’s really hard to navigate an environment like that.”
