Sunday May 25, 2025 | 2 h
Publisher’s note: Este Artículo está TRADUCUDO al español.
The Venetian Convention and Expo Center will host the largest Bitcoin conference in the world next week. Although the cryptocurrency community has met in Las Vegas before, this year’s event has a new political weight with the important presence of the Trump administration.
Vice-President JD Vance, the two eldest sons of Trump, and the David bags of the White House, David Sacks should all appear.
During last year’s conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump defended Bitcoin – a decentralized digital currency operating on blockchain technology – while criticizing what he considered a regulatory overtaking under the Biden administration. His remarks attracted thunderous applause from the crowd of cryptography lovers.
Justin DOOCHIN, business manager of the company organizing the annual conference, said that Trump’s policy on Bitcoin has been “much more favorable” so far. Trump has reassured Bitcoin seized for a “strategic reserve”, installed friendly regulators and revoked the policy of the Biden era.
“This is what excites everyone: he tweets on this subject, speaking to him, adding him to his campaign,” said DOOCHIN. “Put it at the forefront of American policy is extremely optimistic for the cryptographic community.”
DOOCHIN said that the event will have a strict policy on sticking to Bitcoin, a technology that Elisa Cafferata, which has put pressure on the legislation on blockchain in Nevada, derives its value from its transparency and a ceiling on the number of bitcoins can be created.
“Because it is increasingly difficult to create new ones, it is, by design, supposed to increase in value,” said Cafferata. “He must have value. It was supposed to be a way to send money to the world without going through intermediaries such as banks that charge you transaction costs. ”
With an unprecedented government interest, the Convention Industry Day will showcase a program exploring how Bitcoin – alongside other emerging sectors such as AI and space trips – undertake public policy under the theme “Code and Country”.
DOOCHIN noted that participants in the conference became much more politically engaged, a change which it dates back to 2023 when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services, spoke during this year’s convention.
The adoption of cryptocurrency Trump represents a dramatic reversal. In 2021, he rejected Bitcoin as a scam threatening the US dollar.
Hilary Allen, a self-written “cryptographic criticism” and professor of law at the American University, said that “in the second administration, (Trump) realized that it could be the only profit.”
A few days before its second inauguration, the firm connected to Trump, World Liberty Financial, launched a “coin” from Trump – a purely speculative category of cryptocurrency which generally has no use.
And although it was not announced until April, it came with a catch: the 220 best owners obtain a private dinner with the president. Those who attended dinner Thursday evening spent around $ 148 million on the parts, according to USA Today.
“When you create most types of crypto, you create a digital asset from air,” said Allen. “All money you receive from them, you can pocket. So it’s really a way for people to give money for the Trump family if they wish.”
Asked Thursday if the White House would publish a list of those who attended dinner, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was not a White House event and that Trump attends “his personal time”.
“The president is remaining by all the laws on conflicts of interest which are applicable,” she said later. “He is absurd for anyone who is insinuated that this president takes advantage of the presidency. This president was incredibly successful before giving up everything to serve our country. ”
The resident of Las Vegas, Ben Horowitz – half of the partnership behind the venture company Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest cryptography investors in the world – said on a podcast last July with its trading partner that “the future of technology” was at stake with the election.
Horowitz’s partner Marc Andreessen said that Trump’s platform was a “general approval” of their industry: putting an end to the “illegal and non-American cryptographic repression”, defending the “right to extract bitcoin” and oppose a digital currency from the federal reserve.
The couple donated $ 67 million combined in the Pro-Crypto Fairshake Pac, according to Opensecrets, although the Committee supported Democratic and Republican candidates last year.
A little less than half of all companies’ spending during the 2024 elections came from the cryptography industry, revealed the rights to defend left to left.
Trump followed this Andreessen program congratulated. At the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it was “night and day” since Trump took office, said Allen
Now, the Commission has a crypto working group designed to provide regulatory clarity, which the cryptographic industry has triggered the Biden administration to miss. But with this, other regulators fell their work in progress.
“There were other things they lost on, but the fundamental question of the question of whether the cryptographic assets were titles, the SEC continued to win” in court before Trump withdrew the office, said Allen. “You get a change of leadership at the dry … and these prosecution had fallen, abandoned, abandoned.”
One of these companies that has dropped its case is Coinbase, a crypto exchange platform in the Andreessen Horowitz portfolio, who added the former director of the Trump co-camp, Chris Lacivita, to his advisory advice in January. Former senator Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., Also joined.
These are only two examples of what Allen described as a “rotating door” between the government and the lobbying of the industry. She also underlined Summer Mersinger, who recently announced her move from the Commodity Futures Trading American Commission to the CEO of a large commercial association of Washington Crypto.
Despite the current entanglement between the crypto and the GOP, not all Democrats are against the new technology.
The Senate has advanced the legislation supported by the industry around “stablescoins”, a type of cryptocurrency fixed to another asset, such as gold or money. The Act on Engineering, which obtained the support of 16 Democrats to exceed the threshold of 60 Senate vote for the Clot, would provide a regulatory framework for the documents and create reserve requirements for issuers.
The two Nevada Democratic senators voted in favor, with a spokesperson for senator Jacky Rosen saying in the sun that “cryptocurrency is an emerging industry that needs regulation”.
“Senator Rosen voted to advance bipartite legislation to open the door to cryptocurrency regulation. This bill is not the only action that Congress should take into account cryptographic regulations, but this is an important step to protect consumers and support American innovation,” the spokesperson wrote.
Allen does not see things the same way. She thinks that legitimate legislation only part of the industry that has been heavy of abuse. World Liberty Financial, too, has its own stablecoin, other Democrats have worried.
“In addition to fear of running unlike the cryptographic industry money cannon, I find it difficult to see why Democrats support this legislation,” she said. “The legislation essentially blesses stable parts, creating … a larger market for them.”
(Protected by e-mail) / 702-990-8923 / @kyle_chouinard
