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During a glitch-plagued Twitter Space yesterday evening, US presidential candidate and Bitcoin fan Ron De Santis came out against central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), calling their introduction “a massive transfer of power from individual consumers to a central authority.”
De Santis used the Space, hosted by Elon Musk and David Sacks, to announce his presidential nomination for the Republican Party. De Santis will now battle former president Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.
De Santis says that CBDCs are about state control
De Santis has claimed that the government could use CBDCs to track users’ activity and judge them accordingly. To illustrate his point, he used the example of environmental and social governance standards (ESG).
These standards are used by socially-conscious investors to screen potential investments and, according to De Santis, the government may use them as a pretext to track spending and investments. ESG standards are designed in part to help reduce greenhouse emissions and De Santis has been a vocal critic of such measures.
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De Santis says the Dems are against bitcoin
During the Space, Sacks asked De Santis about Bitcoin while he peddled the ‘Operation Chokepoint’ conspiracy. Operation Chokepoint is a Crypto Twitter-based rumor that the US government is trying to shut down the crypto industry. Sacks also made a comment supporting Coinbase’s narrative saying that Coinbase is one of the companies that US authorities are trying to “regulate out of its existence.”
De Santis replied by saying that the people in Washington don’t like Bitcoin because they can’t control it. He continued by stating that the current administration could ‘kill’ the world’s leading crypto inside four years if it maintains its excessive regulatory pressure.
The Bitcoiner on the opposing side
A rival presidential candidate is also making crypto and Bitcoin an issue in his campaign. Robert F. Kennedy Jr is running against current president Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primaries. Kennedy is the nephew of former president John F. Kennedy (JFK) who was assassinated in 1963.
JFK and his legacy have long been held in high regard in US politics, but his nephew appears to be willing to shun mainstream popularity in favor of more conspiratorial and controversial positions. For example, Robert Kennedy is an anti-vaxer and accused the CIA of being partly responsible for his uncle’s murder.
Interestingly, Kennedy is also projecting himself as a very pro-Bitcoin candidate and was invited to speak at the recently-held Miami Bitcoin Conference. He also accepts political contributions in bitcoin and Lightning tokens.
The new crypto constituency
Clearly, in the race to see who will be the next US president, crypto will inevitably become a topic that’s hotly debated, particularly given Kennedy and De Santis’s stance and the talks already taking place in the Capitol around how to regulate the space.
It must also be remembered that the community will likely form a significant portion of the potential voter base and the candidate who gets their messaging right could reap the benefits.
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