Venture capitalists and other Silicon Valley figures have embraced Donald Trump's attempt to retake the U.S. presidency. Their rationale? To billionaire Mark Cuban, it's being driven by cryptocurrencies.
"It's a bitcoin play," Cuban posted Wednesday on X. Trump as president "makes it easier to operate a crypto business because of the inevitable, and required, changes at the" U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he added.
The crypto industry has roundly criticized the SEC for making it difficult to run a digital asset business in the U.S. (Cuban is no stranger to criticizing the SEC, the markets regulator with which he once tussled over insider trading allegations. He won.)
Under Trump, who appears to be ahead of President Joe Biden, the stage is set for inflation and uncertainty about the role of the U.S. in geopolitics, Cuban said. "You can't align the stars any better for a BTC price acceleration," he wrote.
"How high can the price go. Way higher than you think. Remember, the market for BTC is global. And the supply has a final limit of 21m BTC, with unlimited fractionalization," Cuban added.
This week, it was reported that major VCs Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz plan to donate money to support Trump's campaign. Their firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has a crypto arm.
Coinbase, the crypto exchange based in the Silicon Valley town of San Francisco, formed the Fairshake political action committee, which has supported pro-crypto candidates and tried to defeat anti-crypto ones. It's one of the largest PACs in this election cycle.
Trump's pick for vice president, Senator J.D. Vance, has ties to Silicon Valley.
"If things really go further than we can imagine today (and I'm not saying they will. Just that this has a possibility somewhere above zero), then BTC becomes exactly what the Maxis envision," Cuban wrote Wednesday. "A global currency."