Former President Donald Trump pitched his plan to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world,” pledging to establish the nation’s first strategic Bitcoin stockpile, if elected.
Trump is the first presidential candidate from a major political party to make Bitcoin and cryptocurrency a campaign issue, and the first American president to speak at a Bitcoin event, addressing an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd at the Bitcoin 2024 conference at the Music City Center in Nashville, two weeks after surviving an assassination attempt.
“If crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted, and made in the USA,” Trump said. “If Bitcoin is going to the moon, as they say, ‘it’s going to the moon,’ I want America to be the nation that leads the way.”
A cornerstone of his plan to make that happen is the first-ever Strategic National Bitcoin Stockpile, seeded with about 210,000 Bitcoins ― valued at about $13 billion ― that the federal government has already obtained through legal law enforcement seizures. The U.S. government is among the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world.
