When the pandemic hit in 2020, the DJ and personal trainer Jonnie King stopped getting booked for gigs and workout sessions. So he turned to trading crypto, which was rapidly increasing in value at the time. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s hope for me. I can make money while stuck at home,’” he says.
Four years later, King is a devout believer who keeps most of his assets in cryptocurrencies. And although he voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016—due to Sanders’ focus on uplifting the working class—King is now a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, due to Trump’s own recent embrace of crypto.
“I can probably say it’s a single vote issue for me, because that’s my livelihood,” King tells TIME. “Crypto is how I save my wealth, and if [the Democrats] are trying to attack that, that's literally taking my money away from me. How am I supposed to support my family?”
King exemplifies a growing faction from within the cryptocurrency community supporting Trump with open arms. For years, both during his presidency and after, Trump expressed distrust in crypto. In 2021 he went as far as to say that Bitcoin seemed like a scam. But leading up to the 2024 election, Trump has done an about-face and lavished praise onto the technology. And in just the last week, he took several more significant steps to win over the crypto faithful: he announced an appearance at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville on July 27, a new NFT project, and chose a staunchly pro-crypto vice-presidential candidate in J.D. Vance.
The crypto world has returned the enthusiasm. Despite any misgivings they may have with other parts of Trump’s platform or criminal convictions, many believe he will provide a significant boon for the industry should be elected. The crypto community on X, formerly known as Twitter, is filled with pro-Trump sentiment, and crypto money is pouring into Trump’s campaign. And in the aftermath of Trump’s shooting, Bitcoin shot up in price, seemingly based on the belief that the event helped Trump’s chances of being elected.
“Trump has had an incredible and surprisingly positive impact on this space,” Kristin Smith, the CEO of the crypto lobbying group The Blockchain Association, tells TIME. “That was not on my 2024 bingo card.”
Trump’s crypto U-turn
Trump hasn’t gone into much detail about his newfound love for crypto after criticizing it for so many years. But he has used the industry as a wedge issue, directly contrasting himself with leftist crypto skeptics like Elizabeth Warren. And because the crypto lobby is well-organized and flush with money, it offers Trump a whole lot of potential cash.
Trump has attended several fundraisers full of cryptocurrency executives, who promised to throw him more fundraisers, according to The Washington Post. Crypto moguls Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss each donated $1 million in Bitcoin to Trump, criticizing Biden’s “war against crypto,” and Trump discussed crypto policy with pro-crypto entrepreneur Elon Musk, according to Bloomberg. (Musk has since endorsed Trump.) The price tag of attending a “VIP reception” with Trump at the upcoming Bitcoin conference is a cool $844,600 per person.
When Trump announced his campaign would accept cryptocurrency donations, a statement on his website read that the decision was part of a larger fight against “socialistic government control” over the U.S. financial markets. (Joe Biden hasn’t said much publicly about crypto, but his administration has supported stricter policies designed to protect consumers.)
Read More: Why Donald Trump Is Betting on Crypto
And earlier this month, The Post reported that a Trump advisor added language about crypto to the Republican Party platform, which surprised longtime party members. Part of the passage read: “We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin, and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their digital assets and transact free from government surveillance and control.” (Government agencies currently use blockchain tracing to track crypto scammers and other criminals.)
Read More: Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
J.D. Vance, Trump’s VP pick, increases his crypto bona fides
On Monday, Trump further energized crypto fans by choosing the pro-crypto Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. While running for Senate in 2021, Vance disclosed that he owned over $100,000 worth of Bitcoin. The same year, he called the crypto community “one of the few sectors of our economy where conservatives and other free thinkers can operate without pressure from the social justice mob.” Vance also received significant campaign funding from pro-crypto entrepreneur Peter Thiel.
Earlier this year, Vance circulated draft legislation to overhaul crypto regulation and make clearer whether specific crypto tokens should be regulated by the SEC or the CFTC. Politico reported that the proposal seems to be “more industry-friendly” than previously-introduced bills.
The crypto industry has largely cheered the idea of a personal holder of Bitcoin potentially entering the White House next year. “Senator Vance—an emerging voice for fit-for-purpose, pro-innovation crypto legislation—is an ideal candidate to lead the Republican Party’s crypto principles,” Kristin Smith wrote to TIME in an email.
Project 2025 also supports the crypto industry
Looming over the election is Project 2025, a far-reaching conservative blueprint led by the Heritage Foundation which spells out the policies that Trump should enact if he is elected, including launching mass deportations and countering “anti-white” discrimination. While Trump distanced himself from the proposal on Truth Social, dozens of Trump allies and former administration officials are connected to the project.
The crypto industry is excited by crypto-related language in Project 2025. The document calls on the president to abolish the Federal Reserve (whose monetary policies have long been abhorred by crypto advocates) and move the U.S. to a free banking system, in which the dollar is backed by a valuable commodity like gold—or, crypto enthusiasts hope, Bitcoin itself. However, there’s been no indication that Trump or anyone in his administration has considered the idea. The document also calls on regulators to clarify rules around cryptocurrencies, just like Vance is pushing for, which could open the door for greater crypto adoption.
Read More: What is Project 2025?
Questions about Trump’s commitment to Bitcoin linger
Despite all this, there are crypto fans who are skeptical that Trump’s sudden embrace of Bitcoin will carry lasting weight beyond an election year talking point. Some of Trump’s avowed policy proposals, which have been described as authoritarian, seem to counteract Bitcoin’s anti-government, libertarian bent. For instance, his call for all Bitcoin mining to be located in the U.S. rubbed certain crypto idealists the wrong way, as decentralization and immunity to governmental pressures is a key part of the ethos of crypto mining.
Moe Vela, a former advisor to Biden and a senior advisor to the cryptocurrency project Unicoin, is skeptical of Trump’s intentions. “It was not long ago that he was bashing crypto,” he says. “The crypto community tends to be a bit inexperienced when it comes to legislation, policy and politics—and I encourage them to not fall prey to the pandering.”
Vela argues that “healthy and balanced” regulation of crypto is essential to the industry’s growth. “If we don’t have regulation that weeds out nefarious actors—and we’ve already seen we have our fair share of bad actors—that weakens trust and confidence in the sector,” he says.
And Vitalik Buterin, main founder of cryptocurrency Ethereum, wrote a blog post on June 17 cautioning crypto enthusiasts not to cast votes simply based on a candidate’s crypto position. “Making decisions in this way carries a high risk of going against the values that brought you into the crypto space in the first place,” he wrote.
Some polls suggest that crypto is still an extremely niche interest. The Federal Reserve found that just 7% of American adults used or held crypto in 2023, and another poll suggested that anti-crypto sentiment remains high. But the crypto industry is convinced that there could be thousands of single-issue crypto voters, like Jonnie King, who will lift Trump in the coming election.
“Maybe it's just a politician being a politician to win votes,” King says of Trump’s pro-crypto stance. “I’m not saying any man is perfect. But when Biden is campaigning a war against crypto, the one system that is hope for money, I see that as no way going forward.
“If Trump can give us some hope—even if it’s just hope—it’s something.”
