After the November elections, the whole world is closely following the new US administration, which will hit the country starting next January 21st. For this reason, we asked a roundtable of cryptocurrency and blockchain industry experts for their views on what a Biden-formed presidency could mean for digital assets, and what legacy the outgoing, never-too-beloved president Trump will leave.
The impact of the outgoing president will be felt for a long time, even after he is gone, and for many reasons. Many of these reasons are unrelated to what is typically considered to be "presidential". For example, the outgoing president managed to break the record for the number of golf games as president in office - in a single four-year term! Not bad for a record.
The accusations, however, are quite different
A more serious accusation for Donald Trump, however, during his presidency in the Oval Office, will be that he will be leveled for his early inaction against Covid-19 compared to other world leaders and how many more deaths this has caused, as well as tracking dividing lines in the United States based on race, nationality and religion.
A few days ago, the outgoing president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, rejected the Covid-19 relief bill, arguing that much of the money in that bill went to other countries rather than to US citizens. Instead, he proposed to increase the amount that will be paid to Americans to $ 2.000 from the current $ 600 - a proposal that was also launched by the Democrats.
But what about Donald Trump's stance on cryptocurrencies?
According to his own Tweet dated July 2019, the outgoing president said he was not a fan of cryptocurrencies, much less Bitcoin, as they are not real money and their swings are too volatile, as they are based on nothing. In his opinion, therefore, cryptographic currencies could have facilitated illegal behavior, including, among other things, drug trafficking.
Proponents of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were quick to point out that drug trafficking primarily uses the US dollar and not cryptocurrencies as the primary medium of exchange.
In hindsight, we can see that Trump has done little to address the legal concerns surrounding Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in terms of promoting a legislative agenda. Trump left the regulatory efforts to federal agencies, such as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
This has likely created a hostile environment in the United States for innovation in the digital asset space, leading some companies, such as Ripple Labs (here the quotation Real-time Ripple), to move their headquarters outside of the United States in search of a friendlier jurisdiction after they have addressed a possible lawsuit against the SEC.
