To bitcoiners, Trump's speech may have seemed like more of a campaign stump speech and a bit underwhelming bitcoinwise. At least that's how I perceived it as he was speaking. Whereas other speakers were in Nashville to talk bitcoin, Trump was there to campaign and bitcoin was a topic in the campaign.
Also, Robert Kennedy Jr. may have set the bar pretty high by laying out his plan with ambitious bitcoin reserve purchases. I like high goals, however, I'm not sure if his goals are even possible: buy 550 daily until 4 million. Umm, only 450 are minted per day. Who's selling?
Zooming out...
- RFK Jr. is much more free to say things. He has zero chance to win. He will not be president and his plans are moot (moot other than maybe in that they can serve to something of a "first offer" bargaining chip for Trump to react to).
- Trump stands a good chance to win, at least 50/50. Thus, he needs to be more cautious in what he says. For instance, if he'd said, "I promise to replace the US dollar with bitcoin!", the crowd likely would have erupted in applause. However, burning down the house statements like that would be political suicide. You must win office to make changes in office.
From a broad perspective, the speech was huge. We're taking steps here and this was a very big one. This post logged Trump's promises well: #625076 but here are my thoughts:
- A former president and maybe next president spoke at the biggest (at least in US) bitcoin conference. That's de facto official recognition. That alone is a huge change from ignoring bitcoin, combating or criticizing bitcoin.
- A bitcoin reserve or "stockpile" was promised. This is a step in the right direction.
- The notion of keeping bitcoin in the US was big. It's rather general at this point, but hopefully that means protecting those who code, miners who mine, hodlers who hodl, etc. This is maybe bigger than the reserve, actually.
- Personally, I really liked the advisory council proposal. That puts bitcoin "in the White House". That puts people who get it speaking into the president's ear, instead of the media's spin or hell-bent politicians trying to drum up public attention. A good advisory council could help keep the president on point.
- Also personally, I thought the 1 BTC coin gift was pretty cool. Would love to see that sitting on the Resolute Desk.
Overall, considering how far bitcoin has come, I think this will be seen in the future as a watershed moment.