Bitcoin Industry Executives See New Era Dawning After Trump Victory

President-elect Donald Trump's win on the heels of his campaign's embrace of cryptocurrency technology, along with Senate and House victories by a Republican Party seen as friendlier to crypto interests, have sparked a fresh wave of optimism in the crypto world.

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, there’s a palpable sense of optimism coursing through the cryptocurrency world over the prospect of a new era.

It’s a stark contrast to the industry’s mood 24 months ago, when bitcoin was reeling from a precipitous crash in prices, multibillion-dollar scandals and deep questions about the use cases for blockchain technology.

But Trump’s win, coming on the heels of his campaign’s embrace of cryptocurrency technology, along with Senate and House victories by a Republican Party seen as friendlier to crypto interests, has sparked a fresh wave of enthusiasm in the crypto world.

“It’s exuberant,” Lee Bratcher, head of the nonprofit Texas Blockchain Council, told NBC News. He said his summit, taking place later this month in Dallas, has now sold out — a development he said he was not expecting prior to the election.

“The industry recognizes significant changes are going to be coming,” he said.

The energy has been apparent to anyone watching the price of bitcoin. The most popular cryptocurrency shot well above previous all-time highs after Trump’s win became clear, briefly topping $93,000 — a roughly 33% increase in the span of just one week.

As of Friday afternoon, it was trading right around $90,000, still well above its previous peak levels.

The bull run is predicated on a range of proposed reforms that advocates say will unleash even more demand for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — while ultimately, in Trump’s words, making the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet.”

For some skeptics, though, a rapid embrace of all things crypto without regulatory safeguards is fueling concerns of even more rampant scams. In 2023, the FBI received approximately 70,000 complaints of crypto scams costing people $5.6 billion.

There is hope in the industry that bringing more of it into a defined legal framework and onto U.S. shores will ultimately reduce the number of victims.

Brandon Mintz, who runs Bitcoin Depot, a bitcoin ATM company, said he expects federal officials to move from a policy of regulation via enforcement and penalization to a more laissez-faire approach.

“We believe the regulatory environment will change to spur more innovation, not just for crypto firms but all holders of bitcoin,” Mintz said.

The hope is that, as Trump-appointed regulators provide clearer guidelines for large banks and other traditional financial entities, mainstream interest in bitcoin investment will flourish.

Bratcher said the current lack of clarity about bitcoin-investment rules, based on overlapping rulings from agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has created “career risk” for money managers who may have desired to own bitcoin for their clients but who were afraid of personal or professional sanction.

Some of that risk dissipated with the approval earlier this year of bitcoin exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, which allow investors to benefit from bitcoin’s price appreciation.

But with the new administration, Bratcher said, investors can expect the regulations “they’ve been asking for” — and with it, the ability for everyone from the uberrich to 401(k) holders to benefit from what he said would be bitcoin’s inevitable long-term price gains.

To get a sense of the potential investment volume that could be incoming from such changes, one can look at the current value of holdings of existing bitcoin ETFs, which are now worth nearly $100 billion, according to one estimate.

For Ric Edelman, head of Edelman Financial Services, a group that provides training and instruction about investing in bitcoin to traditional finance professionals, even simply moving an investor’s funds allocation from no bitcoin to 1% would represent a sea change.

He said groups like pension boards will ultimately have a fiduciary duty to invest in bitcoin if there is a risk of missing out on massive run-ups in price like the one that has occurred this month.

“The mantra is: ‘Get off zero,” Edelman said. “You can argue whether it should be 1% or 3% or 10%. But you’re having an increasingly difficult time justifying ‘zero.’”

Looser, if more defined, cryptocurrency regulations are also likely to mean a proliferation of alternative cryptocurrencies, said JP Richardson, CEO of Exodus, a cryptocurrency wallet firm. It’s something that has already been occurring in anticipation of a Trump victory — and Trump himself has sought to cash in.

In the weeks preceding the election, Trump announced the launch of an online token called World Liberty Financial. Though it has provided official regulatory filings, they state that “World Liberty” is not a security and that, for now, the tokens are not actually available to U.S. persons.

The risks inherent to cryptocurrencies have not gone away as prices have surged. If anything, the risks will likely be exacerbated, at least in the short term