It makes sense that Trump was a cryptocurrency sceptic. He made (and lost) money in real estate, where you own somethng tangible, and was justifiably skeptical about how bits in a blockchain could have any value. But there are two reasons why Trump has done a 180:
There are a handful of people who ran the right software in 2010 on a whim, netting 50 BTC every time they hit a block, which wasn’t even worth $1 when they mined it but is now worth over 3 Million. And blocks were (and are) found every 10 minutes or so. These people are sitting on billions of dollars in unrealized gains, and will funnel it to the candidate that will give it the best tax treatment (ideally zero) when they sell. And Trump is always willing to listen to people willing to give him money.
Crypto is useful to transfer money without any intermediary, so if Trump wants to accept funds of questionable legality from foreign sources, crypto can enable that. Simply using crypto for it doesn’t make it any less illegal, but can make it harder for authorities to discover, which is what Trump is all about. He doesn’t care about the law or ethics, but only what he can get away with.
It makes sense that Trump was a cryptocurrency sceptic. He made (and lost) money in real estate, where you own somethng tangible, and was justifiably skeptical about how bits in a blockchain could have any value. But there are two reasons why Trump has done a 180:
There are a handful of people who ran the right software in 2010 on a whim, netting 50 BTC every time they hit a block, which wasn’t even worth $1 when they mined it but is now worth over 3 Million. And blocks were (and are) found every 10 minutes or so. These people are sitting on billions of dollars in unrealized gains, and will funnel it to the candidate that will give it the best tax treatment (ideally zero) when they sell. And Trump is always willing to listen to people willing to give him money.
Crypto is useful to transfer money without any intermediary, so if Trump wants to accept funds of questionable legality from foreign sources, crypto can enable that. Simply using crypto for it doesn’t make it any less illegal, but can make it harder for authorities to discover, which is what Trump is all about. He doesn’t care about the law or ethics, but only what he can get away with.