The crypto industry is making its mark on this year’s elections to the tune of some $119 million.
The funding has largely come from two companies — Coinbase and Ripple — which are funneling money into super PACs like Fairshake PAC, which is dedicated to “elevating pro-crypto candidates and attacking crypto skeptics,” according to Public Citizen.
At the 2024 bitcoin conference in Nashville in February, Trump — who called bitcoin “highly volatile and based on thin air” in 2019 — said he’d lay out a plan “to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world.” Trump has already won the backing of several crypto enthusiasts, including his running mate JD Vance, who owns at least $250,000 in bitcoin.
To your point about money transfers, this is only true because crypto exchanges are dodging regulations. The cost and time involved in international transfers is primarily red tape, because no one likes wire fraud, money laundering, or people funding terrorism.
If crypto ever “succeeds” as it hopes to, it will become more and more regulated, and the value you see in it will increasingly diminish.