In more recent news, the Energy Information Administration used emergency authorities to force cryptocurrency miners to comply with information requests. The agency recalled the mandatory collection, but only after it was sued and a judge issued a temporary restraining order.
Finally, over the last few years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a flurry of regulations and enforcement actions. At one point, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler even went so far as to suggest that “everything other than Bitcoin” could have a target on its back. As my colleagues Jennifer Schulp and Jack Solowey have described it, the SEC’s approach has been illogical and unreasonable, warning, “The SEC shouldn’t be left in the shadows to try to snuff out Americans’ work on and access to a new class of technology.”
With such hostile treatment, it’s easy to see why people are looking for change. But is Donald Trump really that different?
Trump seems to have recognized the public’s dissatisfaction and thrown out a few crumbs to appease cryptocurrency users. For example, Trump recently told CNBC he was excited to see how much of his sneaker sales were in cryptocurrency and said, “I’m not sure that I’d want to take it away at this point.” (It was revealed just last year that Trump holds approximately $2.8 million in cryptocurrency.)
However, Trump is far from being a libertarian or a maximalist. “You probably have to do some regulation,” Trump said when asked about Bitcoin in February. He also added he “would not allow countries to go off the dollar,” — suggesting he’d use trade restrictions, regulatory restrictions, or possibly even military intervention to enforce the dollar’s use. In fact, he made similar comments in 2021 when he said cryptocurrencies should be regulated heavily to prevent them from competing with the dollar.
Trump was even more hostile during his presidency.
“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” Trump tweeted in 2019. Perhaps in what would later inspire Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Trump further wrote, “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and illegal activity.” Finally, he wrote that companies looking to create cryptocurrencies should be regulated as banks.