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Donald Trump courted bitcoin lovers by branding 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 balloon the market cap of the entire asset class, Standard Chartered said.
Donald Trump flipped from bitcoin cynic to “crypto president” and it paid off big.
Trump disparaged digital assets as recently as just a few years ago, describing bitcoin as a scam, and yet his latest electoral win was fueled in no small part by crypto-friendly pledges that unlocked millions in campaign funding.
With Trump headed back to the White House, it’s now the industry’s turn to see if its bets on a second term paid off. Here’s what they’re want to see.
One of the root themes of Trump’s crypto platform is a promise to sweep aside regulatory restrictions that have hung over the industry in recent years.
Criticism has been loud over the Biden administration’s handling of the sector, characterized by heated confrontations between the Securities and Exchange Commission and major crypto players.
“Those guys, I mean, they just put so much uncertainty in this entire industry. It was unbelievable. There was no clear guidance, no regulations,” said Tim Kravchunovsky, CEO of Chirp, a decentralized telecommunications company.
Speaking with Business Insider, he added that regulatory conflict has pushed crypto business out of the US, costing Washington its competitive edge.
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, bolstering the economy while advancing the crypto sector,” he told BI over email.
To this end, the industry anticipates that Trump will replace regulatory heads 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.
Meanwhile, to make Trump’s plan of turning the US into a “crypto hub” possible,Kravchunovsky suggested that Washington could provide incentives such as federal grants and tax cuts.
On the legislative front, crypto players will also be watching for the repeal of SAB 121 and the passage of several key bills,
SAB 121, an SEC policy document kept in place by the Biden administration, discourages US lenders from acting as crypto custiodians, given that it requires them to hold an equivalent amount of cash against their crypto holdings. It’s removal would free institutional investors to further adopt digital assets.
