The former and potentially future president’s opinion of Bitcoin hasn’t changed since he said BTC is “based on thin air.”
Former U.S. president Donald Trump has doubled down on his 2019 criticism of cryptocurrency.
Speaking on Fox News’ Varney & Co. on Aug. 31, Trump warned investors that Bitcoin is "potentially a disaster waiting to happen."
In June, Trump called for Bitcoin to be regulated “very, very high,” Fox News noted.
The ex-president added: "Who knows what they are, but they certainly are something that people don’t know very much about.”
Trump’s first comments about cryptocurrency came shortly after Facebook announced its Libra stablecoin project — since renamed Diem in the face of overwhelming opposition from elected officials, financial regulators, and bankers.
In July 2019, Trump said on his now-deleted Twitter account that he was “not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.”
He added, “I like the currency of the United States,” saying that the U.S. dollar is the only “real currency in the USA.”
Bad for the Buck
Trump’s recent comments focused on current concerns that cryptocurrencies such as stablecoins could weaken the position of the U.S. dollar as the world’s de facto reserve currency. That status gives the U.S. government a great deal of economic clout.
Trump warned that investing in cryptocurrencies is bad for the U.S. as it "hurts the United States currency.”
Trump’s comments come as the less crypto-skeptical Biden administration tries to add language to the coming $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package that will force cryptocurrency businesses operating in the U.S. to “report information on foreign account holders so that the U.S. can share information with global trading partners,” Roll Call reported on Aug. 31.
Sharing that data would make it far easier for U.S. tax and law enforcement agencies to get reciprocal information from other countries.
Crypto transaction reporting became a big issue in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that recently passed the Senate. That contains transaction reporting requirements written so broadly that it could sweep in industry participants like miners and validators that simply cannot comply.
