President Donald Trump finally broke his silence on Bitcoin, and the result was disappointingly predictable — and bland, compared to the usual flare that lights up his Twitter rants.
Giving him the rare opportunity to talk about something more orange than his spray tan, Trump announced on Twitter, his favored forum, that he is “not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.”
He then went on to cite Washington, D.C.’s most referenced use case for cryptocurrency (drugs and “other illegal activities”), to which we responded by reminding him that cash is overwhelmingly used to conduct illicit purchases.
Incidentally, bitcoin has rallied 3 percent following Trump’s comments, everyone (on Bitcoin Twitter, at least) had a good laugh about it and the topic was beaten to death by the mainstream press within an hour of the comments.
Trump also took the opportunity to take a swipe at Facebook’s not-actually-a-cryptocurrency, Libra, which he said “will have little standing or dependability” and whose association will have to “seek a new Banking Charter and become subject to all Banking Regulations, just like other Banks, both National and International.”
Reactions
The comment section of Trump’s tweet thread became a playground for rebuttal as all walks of Bitcoin Twitter descended on the tweet faster than Trump cycles through staffers.
“Mr. President, one could say the same of unregulated fiat currencies, like the privately operated U.S. dollar. The advantage of cryptocurrencies is that they are predictable and transparent. Regulated or not, useful tools can be used for good and evil. Don’t let the U.S. fall behind,” Kraken
