No one ever accused Donald Trump of ideological consistency. And yet, even by the standards of a man who often seems capable of switching positions several times in the same speech, and sometimes in the same sentence, it is quite a turnaround. As president he condemned Bitcoin and other crypto currencies ‘a scam against the dollar’. And yet, during this campaign he has turned into an enthusiastic convert, promising to govern as a Bitcoin President if he retakes the White House in November. That raises an intriguing question. Could the Crypto Bros turn Trump into a small state libertarian?
Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrencies will shift him towards small-state liberalism
Speaking at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville over the weekend, Trump embraced the currency more enthusiastically than has done so in the past. He told the cheering enthusiasts for digital money that he would create a ‘strategic Bitcoin reserve’, sack the SEC chair who has been bothering everyone with regulations, and make America ‘the Bitcoin superpower of the world’.
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