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Donald Trump going after Bitcoin - The Cryptonomist

source-logo  en.cryptonomist.ch 18 June 2020 05:49, UTC

A rumour mentioned in a book reveals that in 2018 Donald Trump literally told Steven Mnuchin to go after Bitcoin.

This is reported by Nick Chong on Forbes, according to whom in the book, not yet published and written by former national security adviser John Bolton and titled “The Room Where It Happened“, it was the first time the current President of the United States spoke about Bitcoin. 

Bolton was appointed National Security Advisor by Trump himself in March 2018, but in September 2019, Trump announced via Twitter that he had asked for and obtained his resignation. 

Therefore, the conversation mentioned in the book, which presumably took place in May 2018, may in fact have taken place in his presence. 

Steven Mnuchin, on the other hand, is the Secretary of the Treasury, a close collaborator of the President since February 2017 (Trump has been in office since January 20th, 2017). 

The story Chong told on Forbes begins with the Washington Examiner, which allegedly obtained an excerpt from the book containing Trump’s May 2018 quote on Bitcoin. 

The curious thing is that Trump’s famous tweet against Bitcoin, which is the first time he has publicly addressed the subject, is dated July 2019, more than a year after the alleged citation. 

Just to be clear, in May 2018 the price of bitcoin was around $7,000, following the bursting of the latest big speculative bubble between late December 2017 and February 2018. 

By July 2019, however, it had exceeded $10,000 and was heading for the peak of the year, at over $13,000. 

After peaking in 2019, the price fell back to around $8,000 at the end of September. 

Precisely in September 2019, Trump stated that he would be willing to ban Bitcoin if its price reached $100,000. 

With regard to the May 2018 citation, the only other information revealed by Chong is that it was in the context of a conversation with Mnuchin about trade sanctions and duties against China. 

Mnuchin himself in December 2019 explicitly spoke out against Bitcoin, when BTC’s price hit annual lows, below $7,000. 

These dates seem to show a certain interest of Trump and Mnuchin in the price fluctuations of bitcoin, with a particular interest for those moments in which the focus, especially of the mass media, is high. 

The strange thing, however, is that during the whole course of 2017, when both Trump and Mnuchin were already in charge, they didn’t seem to be interested in Bitcoin even during hype which led to the all-time high, namely as the latest big speculative bubble was inflating between October and December 2017. 

This last consideration raises some doubts about their real intentions, and especially about Donald Trump’s real interest in Bitcoin. It is very difficult to imagine what they are thinking, but it is unlikely that everything can be reduced to that single sentence in May 2018. 

Also because there have been assumptions for some time that Trump actually owns BTC, although officially there is no confirmation of this. 

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