Donald Trump Endorses Crypto For The First Time

It might not sound like an endorsement — but it is.

This week, President Trump addressed holders of his Trump Card NFTs and seemingly dubbed himself the "crypto candidate" with a speech pandering directly to the audience in attendance, while also bashing President Biden's anti-crypto stance.

"Gensler is very much against it, the Democrats are very much against it," Trump said in a nod to SEC Chair Gensler's rampage on the industry. "But I'm good with it."

Now, that's a far cry from getting into specifics of how exactly Trump might change things up, but relative to what Gensler has led with countless Wells Notices and lawsuits against crypto companies, it's a welcome change in tone.

In fact, earlier this week, the House passed a measure to roll back the SEC's so-called anti-crypto "Staff Accounting Bulletin 121." If passed in the Senate, the law would roll back the rule imposed by the SEC that asks custodians of digital assets to account for them as a liability on their balance sheets.

As The Digital Chamber founder Perianne Boring told Coinage earlier this year, "no other industry or asset is subjected to these types of rules or these very significant custody reserve requirements."

And yet, despite a warning from President Biden that he would veto the measure if passed by the Senate, the vote still won over more than 20 Democrats. The measure now moves to the Senate to see if it will come to that.

This could be an important turning point for Gensler's anti-crypto movement within the Biden administration. Powerful banks are watching custodians collect fees from ETF issuers and feel left out. So much so that a smattering of bank industry groups wrote to SEC chair Gary Gensler earlier this year, deriding SAB 121's mandate that they hold equal value in reserves, saying, "These ETPs have already experienced billions of dollars in inflows, but it is practically impossible for banks to serve as custodian for those ETPs at scale."

Suddenly crypto finds itself front and center in the upcoming election, and Trump continues to break from Biden on the matter.

"If you're in favor of crypto, you better vote for Trump," President Trump said.

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