How Trump fell in love with crypto
Sidebar
The Washington Post
4.1 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
On this episode, Rhonda Colvin, James Hohmann, and JM Rieger take a closer look at President Donald Trump’s transformation from vocal crypto critic to now spearheading the U.S. government’s full-throated embrace of cryptocurrency and digital commodities.
Trump’s new love of crypto was on full display during White House Crypto Summit on March 7, led by crypto and artificial intelligence czar David Sacks. The Trump administration, along with tech industry leaders, touted deregulation, a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Assets Stockpile, executive orders and legislation.
Plus, Sam Bankman-Fried lobbies for a pardon from prison on Tucker Carlson’s podcast and reaction to the White House’s surprise decision to withdraw their Center of Disease Control and Prevention nomination, former congressman Dave Weldon, who found out as he was driving to the Capitol to testify.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Look what happened. Is this crazy? We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history. |
| 0:07.8 | Make America great a good thing. How can you be against them? |
| 0:16.6 | President Trump has made a huge pivot and is now embracing cryptocurrency just a few years after saying it was dangerous. |
| 0:24.6 | Welcome to Sidebar. I'm Rhonda Colvin here with my colleagues, columnist and editorial writer James Holman and J.M. Rieger, senior video journalists. |
| 0:32.5 | So let's begin. Let's go back to July 2019. Trump on July 11th, 2019, was tweeting. He says, |
| 0:41.9 | I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is |
| 0:47.5 | highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, |
| 0:54.0 | including drug trade and other illegal |
| 0:56.2 | activity. Now, let's fast forward to last Friday at the White House. |
| 1:00.8 | Last year, I promised to make America the Bitcoin superpower of the world and the crypto capital |
| 1:07.0 | of the planet. And we're taking historic action to deliver on that promise, as you know, |
| 1:11.9 | around the table. Yesterday, I signed an executive order officially creating our strategic Bitcoin |
| 1:18.2 | Reserve, and this will be a virtual Fort Knox for digital goal to be housed within the |
| 1:25.6 | United States Treasury. That's a big thing. |
| 1:30.0 | So going from I'm not a big fan to now the U.S. is going to be the crypto capital of the planet. |
| 1:36.7 | What do we know right now about how Trump is embracing crypto? |
| 1:40.9 | And really, what is crypto? |
| 1:42.0 | If you guys want to go ahead and jump into that, too. |
| 1:44.6 | I mean, it's been a huge shift for Trump, And a lot of this is kind of a political calculation. |
| 1:48.8 | They supported them significantly in 2024. And the crypto industry, Super PACs affiliated with |
| 1:54.4 | crypto firms, plugged over $130 million into the 2024 campaign. Trump spoke at a crypto conference in summer of 2024, |
| 2:04.0 | and as now cryptos are David Sacks got a primetime speaking slot at the first night of the RNC. |
... |
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