Caitlin Long Explains Why 2024 Will Be 'The Bitcoin Election'

The 2024 election cycle may be more than a year away, but presidential hopefuls are already jockeying for early support from a hot new community of voters: Bitcoiners.

At Bitcoin's largest annual conference last week, Vivek Ramaswamy (R), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (D), and Tulsi Gabbard (I), all took the stage to talk policy and ways they would defend digital assets from government overreach. Even while announcing his own presidential bid during a Twitter Space Wednesday night, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) budgeted time to make it clear he'd defend Americans' right to Bitcoin.

"I just do not have an itch to have to control everything that people may be doing in this space," Gov. DeSantis told Elon Musk. "And the current regime, clearly they have it out for Bitcoin and if it continues for another four years they'll probably end up killing it."

According to Bitcoin advocate Caitlin Long, who was in attendance as a speaker at Bitcoin's conference in Miami, it's all proof that 2024 is shaping up to be all about Bitcoin. Paraphrasing former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Long told Coinage in a new interview that, "if 2016 was the Twitter election and 2012 was the Facebook election, then 2024 is going to be 'the Bitcoin election.'"

Interestingly, the issue of the government's role in digital assets seems to be drawing more interest from both Republicans and Democrats. Looking at the speeches from all of the political speakers, they all equally emphasized the importance of defending "freedom of money" as much as freedom of speech.

"Almost that exact same line appeared in all four of their speeches," Long told Coinage, adding Miami Mayor Francis Suarez to the potential list of presidential hopefuls. "It's so interesting because this goes to show that Bitcoin is not a topic that that cuts across political lines much as folks in Washington, DC, in some cases are trying to politicize it."

It's also worth noting that even more established 2024 candidates have evolved their feelings on crypto quite a bit since the last election. President Trump went from calling Bitcoin a "scam" after he left office to licensing his image for an NFT collection that brought in millions of dollars. President Biden has urged his party members in Congress to support SEC Chair Gary Gensler's crackdown on the wider crypto industry. But as Long predicts, candidates will be forced to incorporate some sort of a platform given that surveys continue to show about a fifth of Americans own crypto.

But to avoid the trap of politicians using Bitcoiners to get votes, only to later cast them aside once in office, Long told Coinage there are certain policies she would hope any candidate is able to honor. We asked for her three unbreakable promises that any "Bitcoin President" should be prepared to honor:

"A commitment to freedom of financial transactions, a commitment to allowing the use of open-source code in the blockchain space as well as operating nodes in the blockchain space, and fairness in taxation," she said.

To listen to our full interview with Custodia Bank Founder Caitlin Long and to co-own the first award-winning Web3 media outlet, mint a Coinage NFT. Subscribe on YouTube to make sure you catch our upcoming episode on Bitcoin politics.