Donald Trump picks Bitcoin-owning JD Vance to be his VP

Donald Trump has picked Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate for the 2024 presidential election. This was announced on July 15 on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social. Trump said:

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio.”

JD Vance is big on cryptocurrencies, which is now Trump’s thing. Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto initiative rates Vance highly because he talks positively about crypto on social media and votes in favor of pro-crypto laws.

In a 2022 financial disclosure for the US Senate, Vance reported owning between $100,001 and $250,000 in Bitcoin through Coinbase.

He also voted to overturn a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that required banks to report crypto as a liability on their balance sheets, a rule that President Joe Biden vetoed.

Donald Trump with J.D. Vance. Credits: Vanity Fair

Vance’s political career is pretty new. He won his Ohio Senate seat in 2022, backed by Trump in the midterm elections. Vance endorsed Trump for the 2024 Republican primaries.

But he didn’t always like Trump. He once said Trump was “unfit” to be President and that anyone who voted for him was an “idiot.”

The dude is just built different. pic.twitter.com/D2yzskFfyA

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) July 14, 2024

According to Trump, Vance has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance. He said that throughout the campaign, Vance will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for.

“The American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond.”

Vance became famous in 2016 with his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which talks about his upbringing in a white, working-class family. At that time, he called himself a “never Trump guy.”

Fast forward eight years, and Vance is now a Republican senator and a fierce Trump supporter. He appears on TV as a Trump surrogate and is seen as a top contender for Trump’s VP in the 2024 election.

Vance supports an isolationist approach and is against more US aid to Ukraine. He’s also been criticized for supporting Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

President Joe Biden

Vance said if he had been in the Senate at that time, he would have voted against certifying the results. His economic ideas have split the business community.

His 2022 Senate campaign got funding from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, and he’s popular in Silicon Valley. Last month, he organized a big fundraiser for Trump in San Francisco, hosted by tech investors David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya.

However, Vance’s views have raised concerns among traditional Republicans on Wall Street and elsewhere. They worry that as VP, Vance could entirely change the party’s platform for years to come.