Since early this year, former President Donald Trump has been warning over President Joe Biden’s digital dollar push.
In a rally in New Hampshire in January, he equates the move to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as “government tyranny.”
“This would be a dangerous threat to freedom,” Trump warned.
“You know what they’re doing—such a currency would give a federal government, our federal government, absolute control over your money. They could take your money, you wouldn’t even know it’s gone.”
Similar to government-sponsored digital applications like Venmo or Paypal, the proposition to implement CBDC allows Americans to send money or pay transactions to peers and institutions digitally rather than using physical coins and banknotes.
According to Trump, the imposition of CBDC allows the federal government to monitor, freeze, and seize the assets of a private citizen.
In response to Biden’s financial regulatory crackdown, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee expressed support for cryptocurrency.
During a meeting at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday, he told crypto-backers that they should vote for him because of the policies the Biden government has unleashed.
“They are against it,” he said at an event promoting his own non-fungible token, or NFT.
Biden’s White House recently threatened that it would veto a resolution to counter-mandate the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121 (SAB 121), a cryptocurrency policy guideline prohibiting banks from handling crypto users.
In a statement last Wednesday, Biden justified that “SAB 121 was issued in response to demonstrated technological, legal, and regulatory risks that have caused substantial losses to consumers.”
He further said, “[He] strongly opposes” disrupting the SEC’s work on this.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, a rabid anti-crypto, actively campaigned for SAB 121.
With this move, Biden has made another bomb that would destroy him.
“Gensler is very much against it,” Trump said Wednesday about Biden’s opinion on crypto. “The Democrats are very much against it.”
Trump’s shift of perspective on crypto has earned him respect from crypto advocates.
“It’s pretty remarkable to see, in the few years since he’s left office, the 180 that he has done on crypto,” said Cody Carbone, an officer at the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a crypto advocacy group.
“It’s pretty great to see him come out and be supportive of the industry.”
Some pro-crypto lawmakers also hit SEC chair Gary Gensler and Biden.
The SEC’s accounting policy “made a joke of the rulemaking process and ignored other regulatory agencies,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-North Carolina).
