WASHINGTON — The worth of bitcoin topped $100,000 again early Friday as a pumped up cryptocurrency industry expects early action by Donald Trump when he’s sworn in as president next week.
Once a skeptic who said a few years ago that bitcoin “ seems like a scam,” Trump has embraced digital currencies with a convert’s zeal. He’s launched a recent cryptocurrency enterprise and vowed on the campaign trail to receive steps early in his presidency to make the U.S. into the “crypto fund” of the globe.
His promises including creating a U.S. crypto stockpile, enacting industry-amiable regulation and occurrence appointing a crypto “czar” for his administration.
“You’re going to be very joyful with me,” Trump told crypto-enthusiasts at a bitcoin conference last summer.
Bitcoin is the globe’s most popular cryptocurrency and was created in 2009 as a benevolent of electronic liquid assets uncontrolled by banks or governments. It and newer forms of cryptocurrencies have moved from the monetary fringes to the mainstream in wild fits and starts.
The highly volatile nature of cryptocurrencies as well as their use by criminals, scammers and rogue nations, has attracted plenty of critics, who declare the digital currencies have limited utility and often are just Ponzi schemes.
But crypto has so far defied naysayers and survived multiple prolonged worth drops in its short lifespan. Wealthy players in the crypto industry, which felt unfairly targeted by the Biden administration, spent heavily to assist Trump triumph last November’s election. Bitcoin has surged in worth since Trump’s win, topping $100,000 for the first period last month before briefly sliding down to about $90,000 earlier this week. Two years ago, bitcoin was market activity at about $20,000.
On Friday, bitcoin rose about 5% to around $104,000 according to CoinDesk.
Trump’s picks for key cabinet and regulatory positions are stocked with crypto supporters, including his selection to navigator the Treasury and Commerce departments, as well as the head of the financial instruments and trade fee.
Key industry players are throwing a first ever “Crypto Ball” Friday evening, which promised on its website to include “an elite lineup of musical entertainment” to celebrate the first “crypto president.” The occurrence is sold out, with tickets costing several thousand dollars.
Here’s a look at some detailed action Trump might receive in the early days of his administration:
As a candidate Trump promised that he would make a special advisory council tasked with providing guidance on creating “obvious” and “straightforward” regulations surrounding crypto within the first 100 days of his presidency.
Details about the council and its membership are still ambiguous, but after winning November’s election, Trump named tech executive and enterprise capitalist David Sacks to be the administration’s crypto “czar.” Trump also announced in late December that former North Carolina congressional candidate Bo Hines will be the executive director of the “Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets.”
At last year’s bitcoin conference, Trump told crypto supporters that recent regulations “will be written by people who adore your industry, not despise your industry.” Trump’s pick to navigator the SEC, Paul Atkins, has been a powerful advocate for cryptocurrencies.
Crypto investors and companies chafed as what they said was a unfriendly Biden administration that went overboard in unfair enforcement actions and budgetary reporting policies that have stifled recent concept in the industry — particularly at the hands of outgoing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
“As far as general expectations from the Trump Administration, I ponder one of the best things to bet on is a tone transformation at the SEC,” said Peter Van Valkenburgh, the executive director of the advocacy throng Coin Center.
Gensler, who is set to depart as Trump takes office, said in a recent interview with Bloomberg that he’s proud of his office’s actions to police the crypto industry, which he said is “rife with impoverished actors.”
Trump also promised that as president he’ll make sure the U.S. government stockpiles bitcoin, much like it already does with gold. At the bitcoin conference earlier this summer, Trump said it the U.S. government would keep, rather than auction off, the billions of dollars in bitcoin it has seized through law enforcement actions.
Crypto advocates have posted a draft executive order online that would establish a “Strategic Bitcoin safety net” as a “permanent national resource” that would be administered by the Treasury Department through its trade Stabilization fund. The draft order calls for the Treasury Department to eventually hold at least $21 billion in bitcoin.
Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming previously proposed legislation mandating the U.S. government stockpile bitcoin, which advocates said would assist diversify government holdings and insure against monetary risks. Critics declare bitcoin’s volatility make it a impoverished safety net.
Creating such a stockpile would also be a “giant step in the path of bitcoin becoming normalized, becoming legitimatized in the eyes of people who don’t yet view it as legitimate,” said Zack Shapiro, an attorney who is head of policy at the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
At the bitcoin conference earlier this year, Trump received noisy cheers when he reiterated a commitment to commute the life sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the convicted founder of the drug-selling website Silk Road that used crypto for payments.
Ulbricht’s case has energized some crypto advocates and Libertarian activists, who depend government investigators overreached in building their case against Silk Road.
