It did not take long for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to spark crypto traders into action.
In the aftermath of the incident, the price of Bitcoin rose 10pc to breach the $65,000 (£50,000) barrier, as digital currency investors gambled on the Republican candidate becoming president in November.
While Trump previously decried Bitcoin as a “scam against the dollar”, his recent pivot on crypto has led to market enthusiasts viewing him as the best bet to avoid tight regulation.
His new-found enthusiasm for crypto has also led to a surge in Silicon Valley donors queuing up to back Trump’s presidential bid. Their resolve has been strengthened ever since the appointment of JD Vance as his vice-presidential running mate this week.
California has long been a hub of Democratic, socially liberal sympathies.
However, Vance, the 39-year-old Republican senator, who found fame with Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of his Rust Belt upbringing, has gathered a following among the Bay Area’s billionaire elite.
This includes libertarians, free marketeers and free speech advocates, all of whom have been drawn in by Vance’s brand of populism.
While Trump has steered clear of pledging concrete policy ideas in recent months, Vance is more ideologically driven and has been described as a crypto evangelist.
Faith in his pro-competition stance has led to crypto investors jumping over themselves to back the Trump-Vance ticket. Support has been fuelled by accusations that Joe Biden’s White House, and its army of Washington regulators, has stifled the cryptocurrency industry.
In a podcast on Monday, Ben Horowitz – one half of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has $35bn under management – said: “It’s such an important technology ... This has been one of our biggest battles.”
While traditional Republican donors may rally behind topics such as abortion, gun control or taxation, Horowitz’s venture firm has made no secret that its backing hinged on its support for crypto.
The firm’s partners, Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, came out this week in support of the Trump ticket, telling staff they planned to donate to Republican political action committees.
It is the first time the Sand Hill Row firm has endorsed a candidate.
The duo, both of whom were early investors in crypto companies such as Coinbase, have railed against decisions by US regulators to tighten rules around digital currencies.
Like many crypto-backers, they cite Gary Gensler, the Biden-nominated head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as a bogeyman.
Under Gensler, the SEC has launched legal challenges against digital coin exchanges including Coinbase, accusing them of enabling the trade of unregistered securities.
“There’s no reason to treat the crypto market differently from the rest of the capital markets just because it uses a different technology,” Mr Gensler wrote in 2022.
Earlier this year, Biden reiterated his backing for Gensler by vetoing an effort by Congress to overturn new SEC rules forcing crypto companies to record customer holdings on their balance sheets as liabilities. This policy was viewed by the industry as punitive red tape.
While Trump has historically been on the fence on cryptocurrency, he has lately come out as a champion of the industry.
His policy platform, formally adopted by the Republican Party in July, issued a call to “end Democrats’ unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown” and a pledge to “defend the right to mine Bitcoin”.
“It’s just an absolute 180 from what we have been experiencing,” Andreessen said this week, adding that Biden’s team had engaged in a “brutal assault on a nascent industry”.
“It’s been impossible to make progress on this with the White House and it’s a totally intolerable situation,” he added.
The pair also disclosed that they had been snubbed by President Biden despite requests to meet him, but had spoken to Trump over dinner about their policy concerns.
The appointment of Vance as running mate has only added to this fervour.
The vice presidential candidate has a personal interest in cryptocurrency, with documents revealing he holds $250,000 in digital coins on the Coinbase exchange.
Vance is “probably the best crypto VP pick by a decent margin”, wrote Scott Johnsson, general partner at VB Capital on X, adding it made him a “frontrunner for the nomination in 2028”.
The Ohio senator is well-known among Silicon Valley’s elite.
He previously worked for Peter Thiel, the Republican donor and Palantir founder, at his venture capital firm Mithril Capital.
He later founded his own fund with backing from Thiel, and invested in Rumble, a pro-free speech rival to YouTube.
When Vance ran for Congress, Thiel donated $15m to his campaign and personally introduced him to Trump.
Thiel and Elon Musk both reportedly lobbied the former Republican president to pick Vance as a running mate, the New York Times reported.
Speaking at an event earlier this year, Vance made no secret of his support for the cryptocurrency sector. He described Gensler, the SEC head, as “the worst person” in the Biden administration, claiming that he wants to “inject politics way too much into the business of securities”.
He said: “The approach that Gary has taken to regulating blockchain and crypto seems to be almost the exact opposite of what it should be.”
One industry source says Vance is seen as a long-term believer in the sector. “While Trump has only recently taken an interest in crypto, Vance has taken the time to learn and engage with the technology,” they said.
“To their credit, so have many top congressional Democrats, but unfortunately the White House has done the exact opposite.”
Still, the technology sector may not have it entirely its own way with Vance.
He has advocated for breaking up Google and what he sees as bias in Silicon Valley against conservatives.
Unlike many Republicans, he is a keen supporter of Lina Khan, the Biden-nominated head of the Federal Trade Commission who has launched a crusade against the technology industry.
“Lina Khan is the person I would point to as the best person within the Biden administration,” he said this year.
Regardless, Bay Area cash is already flooding into the Trump campaign.
Musk is reportedly planning a multimillion-dollar donation, while filings show that a Republican funding vehicle has raised $8.8m from technologists including Sequoia Capital partners Shaun MaGuire and Doug Leone, as well as cryptocurrency entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Crypto investors have also donated $161m to FairShake – a political action group that has promised to back parties of any stripe if they support the sector.
So far, however, the vast majority of its funding has gone towards opposing Democratic candidates. The arrival of Vance could tip the scales further.
David Sacks, a billionaire tech tycoon and Trump supporter, held a fundraiser for the Republican nominee in June, charging $300,000 per head for a gala at his Pacific Heights mansion.
“God bless JD,” Sacks posted on X as Vance’s role as running mate was confirmed, “God bless Trump, and God bless the USA.”
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