Donald Trump will embrace cryptocurrency if he is re-elected President

Donald Trump says he will embrace cryptocurrency if he is re-elected US President, despite previous remarks about its volatility.

Former US President Donald Trump will embrace cryptocurrency if he is re-elected.

The ex ‘Apprentice’ host – who is vying for another term in the Oval Office after being impeached twice – previously dubbed the payment method as “based on thin air” but has now changed his opinion.

The 78-year-old businessman announced that he wanted to make the United States into a “bitcoin superpower” and a “capital of the planet for cryptocurrency” while addressing a crowd at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Trump promised to create a “strategic reserve” of the currency already held by the government.

He also vowed to sack Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and establish a crypto advisory council.

Trump said: “We will have regulations, but from now on the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.”

This comes after he posted on Twitter, now X, in 2019 that their “value is highly volatile and based on thin air”.

During his 50-minute speech, Trump, however, rallied against recent seizures of the tokens by the US government and promised to pardon cybercriminal Ross Ulbricht, who ran the site Silk Road selling drugs and other illegal wares on the dark web. He was sentenced to life in prison after six overdoses were connected to his website.

Trump said: “They took it away from you. So, as I take steps to transform that vast wealth into a permanent national asset to benefit all Americans, today I repeat my promise to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht.”