Crypto’s Rising Political Clout Bolstered by Campaign Promises and Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill

In an unprecedented recognition of legitimacy, two of the US’s three leading Presidential candidates promised to not only deregulate the domestic digital asset industry, but also to establish a strategic stockpile of Bitcoin (BTC) within the US Treasury Department. Accompanying legislation, set to be introduced in the Senate, would see excess reserves from the US Fed re-allocated to accumulate a sum of 1 million BTC. Such a stockpile would be meant to counterbalance the US’s ever-increasing debt load and be held in reserve over the course of decades.

Bitcoin’s jump to a record valuation earlier this year has left many digital asset enterprises and investors flush with large sums of capital that can now materially influence November’s race for the White House. Though it is the Republican and Independent Presidential tickets that are appealing most aggressively to pro-crypto interests in the upcoming election, Congress has exhibited an increasingly bipartisan bend toward creating coherent and less stringent regulatory frameworks for digital assets in the US.

Related Assets & ETF: Bitcoin (BTC-USD), iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)

The unit price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Bitcoin (BTC) approached the $70,000 threshold for the first time in nearly two months on Monday morning, following a weekend like no other for digital assets in the realm of American politics. In particular, two of the leading three candidates for US President, Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump, as well as independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., each addressed the world’s largest annual Bitcoin conference in Nashville, TN. The latest polling averages calculated by RealClearPolling suggest that these two candidates control a cumulative majority of about 50.1% support among potential voters (44.3% for Trump and 5.8% for Kennedy) in nationwide five-way race that includes third-party bids for the White House.

As MRP has previously noted, 2024 marks the first time that Bitcoin (and the regulation of cryptocurrencies more generally) has become a meaningful issue in the most crucial political election in the world. A large portion of this sudden recognition by politicians is related to dollars and cents. With Bitcoin rallying to all-time highs above $73,000 earlier this year, many American crypto investors and enterprises have been juiced with capital and have a vested interest in protecting their assets from uncertain regulatory prospects that have dogged the industry for years. Per Reuters, crypto super PACs Fairshake, Defend American Jobs, and Protect Progress have so far raised more than $110 million this election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.

Trump initiated his pro-crypto offensive earlier this year, likely part of an effort to begin peeling away swing voters that remain undecided (or in support of a third party candidate like Kennedy), as well as heavily-moneyed crypto industry donors. Trump has become the first major party candidate to accept Bitcoin and crypto donations while courting potential digital asset donors in closed-door meetings with Bitcoin mining executives and experts. Over the weekend, he held a fundraising event alongside the Bitcoin 2024 conference where seats were going for as much as $844,600 and photos with the former President will be charged at $60,000 apiece. This is largely standard practice in regard to political fundraising with megadonors, but it has rarely, if ever, been done in pursuit of crypto cash before. Direct contributions to the Trump campaign in the form of crypto totaled just $3 million in the second quarter, less than 1% of the titanic $331 million haul the campaign pulled in throughout that period, but that likely understates the true impact of crypto’s impact as…