Donald Trump: This afternoon I’m laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world. I will get it done.

Simone Del Rosario: Bitcoin nears $70,000 after Donald Trump laid out plans this weekend to be the first crypto-friendly presidential administration. 

Donald Trump: On day one I will fire Gary Gensler and hire a new SEC chairman. I didn’t know he was that unpopular. I will appoint a new SEC chairman who believes America should build the future, not block the future, which is what they’re doing.

Simone Del Rosario: Though the former president was no friend of crypto during his first term, he’s warmed to the industry in recent months and appears to be fully embracing it now. Trump made a number of promises to an enthusiastic crowd at this year’s Bitcoin conference. 

Donald Trump: If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration United States of America to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the US Government currently holds or acquires into the future. We’ll keep 100%. I hope you do well, please. This will serve in effect as the core of the strategic national Bitcoin stockpile. 

Simone Del Rosario:

The U.S. government holds more than 210,000 Bitcoin tokens, worth nearly $15 billion dollars. The government’s stash was mostly seized from cybercriminals and the dark web. 

I want to get into a number of the promises made by Trump this weekend and what they mean for the crypto industry and the price of tokens. Well, joining me to do that is Chris Giancarlo, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Trump and current senior counsel and co-chair of the Willkie Digital Works Practice. Chris, thank you so much for joining me. I want to first get into Trump’s promise on day one to fire SEC chair Gary Gensler. Obviously that came with huge amount of applause that our viewers just heard. But doesn’t his term end in 2026 and isn’t that position protected from a president firing without cause?

Chris Giancarlo:

You know, Simone, chairs of regulatory agencies, at least the CFTC and the SEC, serve at the pleasure of the president. Their term as a commissioner doesn’t necessarily overlap with the presidential term, so it’s often the case that chairs who need to step down as chair can remain as a commissioner. But under the authorizing statute for both the SEC and the CFTC, no more than three of the five commissioners can be of the president’s own party. So in fact, President Trump would likely have the opportunity to name an additional Republican commissioner to the two Republicans already there and to designate his own chairman. So in fact, he does have the power on day one to fire any chair and replace that with his own acting chair until it goes to a Senate confirmation.

Simone Del Rosario:

Got you. What makes Gary Gensler so unpopular with the crypto industry?

Chris Giancarlo:

I think Gary Gensler, I think a great deal of disappointment in the industry, someone who is actually quite knowledgeable about this innovation, but has served really as the face of this administration’s hostility to digital assets and to digital finance innovation here in the United States. Actually, fairly good strides were made and seen in the United States as a leader in this innovation during the first Trump administration, leads that have been really squandered. Electric Capital, an outfit out of San Francisco, does an analysis every year of engineering talent in this industry, showing that the amount of American engineering talent has been leaving for other jurisdictions over the last four years. And really the hostility to this innovation has been spearheaded by the SEC under Gary Gensler.

Simone Del Rosario:

Well, and that goes into this promise of making America the crypto capital of the world. What goes into that? The Bitcoin mining in the United States, bringing that back here, saying that stable coins are going to help the dollar. I might add that back in his first term, he used to say that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency was a threat to the U.S. dollar. So can you explain to me what being the crypto capital would be?

Chris Giancarlo:

Yeah, you know, there’s a couple of different things here. One is the role of the dollar and how this innovation affects that. The other one is Bitcoin mining. But at heart, as I’ve often talked about, crypto is about a new architecture of finance. It’s about an architecture that is basically internet-based architecture of distributed ledgers of value residing on blockchains as opposed to value being recorded on the balance sheet of financial institutions and banks. It’s an entirely new architecture. The United States has dominated finance of the analog era of the 20th century. The question is, who’s going to dominate finance in this new digital network architecture of the 21st century? And I think, and I believe what Trump is really talking about is making sure that the innovations in this take place here in the United States so that the United States is as dominant in this new wave of the internet, this internet of value, as the United States was dominant in the first wave of the internet and internet of information. I think we were making strides toward that, notwithstanding Trump’s legitimate concern of how this new innovation would affect the dollar’s role as a reserve currency. We were making strides. There were some important steps that were taken during the first Trump administration, the creation of Bitcoin futures, of Ethereum futures as regulated marketplaces here in the United States, led to those products being primarily priced in dollars, a very important element of the dollar’s reserve capacity. And over the last few years, think President Trump’s thinking on this has evolved to recognize that instruments like stable coins, like this new internet of value, will actually enhance the dollar’s value. And they’re not the threat to the dollar. What’s the threat to the dollar is profligate spending and currency debasement that has really accelerated over the last four years. Both parties are equal opportunity offenders when it comes to dollar debasement, but dollar debasement has really accelerated spectacularly in the last few years.

Simone Del Rosario:

You talked about this being a space of innovation and competition amongst the world. You and I have talked about this before. Other countries are moving forward with central bank digital currencies. One of Trump’s promises this weekend was to stop any type of development of a CBDC. We know that the industry itself would not like to see the central bank at the heart of a digital currency, but do you have a different view of that? Is it smart to not enter the CBDC race? Where do you stand on that?

Chris Giancarlo:

Well, I’m probably second to no one in sharing the concerns about government surveillance and the ability of governments to influence any type of centralized digital form of currency to, say, restrict private citizens from engaging in lawful commerce, but commerce government doesn’t want you to engage in or politicians don’t. In the same way they view social media platforms to limit freedom of speech, you can envision people using centralized systems of value, whether they be CBDC or stable coins, governments limiting people’s choice. ‘We don’t want people buying ammunition, notwithstanding the fact that it’s protected by the Second Amendment, or we don’t want people contributing to those politicians because we don’t like what they have to say.’ You can imagine government restricting that in the same way they’ve done with social media. So I share the concern, but I also feel and I think that you’re seeing this in President Trump’s evolution on this, recognizing that the dollar cannot remain an analog instrument in a digital future. Our economic competitors like the EU and our economic adversaries like China are developing central bank digital currencies that are going to play an important role in global commerce. And the dollar has to compete against them. So we do need to think about how we modernize the dollar and there are many ways to go about it, but we need to make sure those issues of privacy that I think President Trump is concerned with are reflected in the designs of those systems.

Simone Del Rosario:

Let’s talk about this strategic Bitcoin reserve. Many people may be surprised to learn that the US government holds nearly $15 billion worth of Bitcoin. We know that most of that is seizures and that’s under the control of the Department of Justice. So what is so exciting and popular about the United States continuing to hold those coins?

Chris Giancarlo:

So what’s interesting, Simone, is I know President Trump was very careful in how we couch this. He talked about a strategic stockpile, not a strategic reserve. You know, it’s very common for countries around the world to stockpile key commodities, right? We have a strategic stockpile of oil. China stockpiles not only oil, but industrial metals like rebar and copper. They stockpile other commodities like foodstuffs, like soybeans and wheat. And United States at various times has stockpiled those items as well. I think that makes a lot of sense. As the world’s first digital commodity, as opposed to an agricultural commodity, stockpiling Bitcoin makes a lot of sense, especially as some of our economic adversaries are now talking about using Bitcoin as a strategic reserve to back up their own currency. Trump’s not talking about it as a strategic reserve to back up the dollar, but he is talking about stockpiling it as a digital commodity, especially vis-a-vis competitive monetary policy and how different digital currencies are going to be developed. So I thought it actually reflected a fairly sophisticated level of thinking on this, and I’m very pleased and I’m very supportive of it.

Simone Del Rosario:

You know, crypto didn’t seem like such a partisan issue not too long ago. And in fact, under the Biden administration, we have seen the development of things like cryptocurrency ETFs come to market, something that, you know, was really pushed back against just a very short time ago. Would you say that crypto is starting to become a partisan issue now, though?

Chris Giancarlo:

Well, let’s think about how we got to those ETFs. It wasn’t that the Biden administration said, hey, let’s do an ETF. They were forced into it by court action that ruled that their refusal to grant the ETF was arbitrary and capricious. And even the chairman of the SEC admitted they were forced into it. So it wasn’t that they were putting their front foot forward. They were actually putting their front foot backward until the courts ruled against them. I don’t think crypto was political until this administration, with a very repressive, suppressive approach to crypto, both in terms of regulation by enforcement, by Operation Choke Point, what people call Operation Chokepoint 2 .0, by restricting banking services to this industry. I think that’s what created a political opening. Politics abhors a vacuum. If one party is going to create an opening the other party is going to seize it. There’s no question that this has been an opportunity for Republicans to seize, but I think what’s remarkable is how firmly they’re seizing it and how actually now, quite in a very sophisticated way, going even further than that with some very thoughtful proposals like the Bitcoin stockpile we just discussed, like making the United States a crypto capital and moving to make Bitcoin mining actually a favorite activity here in the United States.

Simone Del Rosario: 

Yeah, would you say that Trump has now run away with a crypto support?

Chris Giancarlo:

I think so. I don’t know how the Harris campaign now responds in anything that even matches where President Trump’s going. So for those voters who really focus on this exclusively, I think there’s really only one choice in terms of a positive policy statement. It’s hard to undo what’s been done over the last three and a half years. It’s hard to say, ‘Oh never mind that, we’re going to go in a different direction,’ but let’s wait and see.

Simone Del Rosario:

Yeah, what would people who are passionate about crypto, and obviously there’s a lot of heavyweights in that arena, what would you think they should be encouraging either administration to move forward with? Voters go to the polls, voters make the decisions, you’re not guaranteed that your horse is gonna win the race.

Chris Giancarlo:

Yeah. What I would say is if I were advising the Harris campaign, I would advise them to make it clear that they see this innovation as essential for American financial marketplace leadership in the 21st century. I must say that when I take the six items that Trump mentioned, making the US the crypto capital of the world, creating a strategic Bitcoin stockpile, replacing the SEC chairman with a pro-crypto SEC chairman, viewing stablecoins as pro supportive of the dollar, ending Operation Chokepoint 2 .0 and to bring Bitcoin mining back strongly to the US., what you see is a recognition that we need this technology to advance American interests in the 21st century. He talks about making the United States first in all these areas. I view it as making sure that this new technology of transferring and holding value is, the leadership in it is American. I think what’s needed on the other side is not necessarily a set of policy prescriptions, but just an understanding that the world is changing and the old analog account -based system is not going to cut in a world of digital networks of value in the United States, just as it led in the first wave of the internet, needs to lead in the second wave of the internet. You know, the United States led that first wave of the internet, and we did it by bringing to bear our values and dominating the institutions like ICANN and the Internet Society that set the global standards. What’s really so disappointing right now is the United States is not even at the leadership table of developing the standards of the internet of value of the 21st century. We’re leaving that to the Europeans. We’re leaving it to the Chinese. The Chinese hold most of the patents in this area and are developing a lot of the engineering talent. What we need to do is restate that it’s in the United States interest to dominate this innovation, just as we dominated early wave of the internet. And I’m not seeing that come from the Biden-Harris team, but there’s still 100 days before the election. Let’s see if it does come.

Simone Del Rosario:

Well, and as far as it being an election issue and having political pressure, it doesn’t hurt that crypto’s really up right now, right? If it were not as high a value, there wouldn’t be as much power and influence to be able to press these points.

Chris Giancarlo:

You’re absolutely right, Simone. I mean, you know, look, we all say, it’s all politics, but, you know, politics serves a purpose. It serves the purpose of sharpening differences, of having a debate on issues. We wouldn’t be having a debate about a U.S. stockpile about crypto innovation but for an election campaign. So, you know, in some ways it’s a good thing we do this. And I think the parties have to actually choose their sides and the voters will determine. And look, this election is going to be about many things. This is just one element of it, but it’s an increasingly important element. Americans are an aspirational society. A new technology comes along and we want to engage with it. We want to innovate with it. We want to evolve with it. And not everybody that wants to innovate in this is a crook, most people, and I deal with them all the time, are young, they’ve got a broad vision, they’re creative, they want to do right but they need regulators to create pathways to do right. And that’s really what’s been missing is, ‘okay, these are the wrong roads to follow, but here’s the right one.’ And I think if I have one disappointment with the SEC, it’s not said, here’s the right one, here’s how you get there. It’s basically said, well, follow the same rules that were designed for stock issuance in the early 20th century with paper prospectuses and a brick and mortar building. And that’s just not where the world has gone. And we need a bespoke avenue. And so I tip my hat to President Trump for embracing this. Yeah, it may be good politics, but I think it’s also good policy. And we need good policy in this area.

Simone Del Rosario:

Chris Giancarlo, former chair of the CFTC, current senior counsel and co-chair of the Wilkie Digital Works Practice. Thank you so much. We can’t buy this type of expertise. We’re so glad that you decided to share it with us.

Chris Giancarlo: Well, great spending time with you, Simone. Thank you.