This Week on Crypto Twitter: Trump Talks Bitcoin After Ethereum ETFs Launch

Crypto Twitter is still giddy after former president Donald Trump took the stage at Bitcoin Nashville on Saturday to read off a list of campaign promises aimed at courting Bitcoin fans and crypto investors. Although his remarks began an hour late and were often meandering, he told the crowd, “I'm laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet.”

The campaign promise that unquestionably drew the most raucous response was a vow to fire Gary Gensler, chair of the SEC. Trump expressed surprise at how unpopular Gensler was, and revisited the applause line by repeating it again.

To assuage the hunger for those seeking a more defined crypto policy, Sen. Cynthia Lummis followed up with a proposal to set up a strategic U.S. Bitcoin reserve, declaring it a key way to address the massive national debt.

The Bitcoin conference was a notably colorful way to cap the week, which began with major mainstream headlines for the crypto industry. Spot ETH ETFs debuted on Wall Street. on Tuesday. The new funds kicked off with a mild but sturdy launch, despite massive outflows. Analysts like Bloomberg’s James Seyffart applauded the premiere as a “very solid first day.”

But as the week progressed, some crypto users grew dismayed by ETH’s sagging price—which got no boost from the ETFs. 

Nonetheless, others held faith that ETH’s lackluster performance was actually a promising sign, not a cursed one. Bitcoin similarly dipped after the listing of spot BTC ETFs in January, before smashing through all-time highs. 

Regardless of hour-to-hour price movements, the week’s events have provided Ethereum with one of its most prominent displays of legitimacy. 

Meanwhile, in Bitcoin-land, the frenzy over Donald Trump's apperance in Nashville was stirred up even further when the conference organizer suggested that presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris could attend the event.

Though the Harris campaign never confirmed that the vice president ever considered attending the conference, Crypto Twitter immediately erupted into a frenzy of excited speculation and dream-casting, imagining a near future where crypto might become a non-partisan issue embraced across the political spectrum. 

The eagerness to believe that Harris might turn the bend on crypto was fueled in part by reports  that her camp reached out to billionaire and Bitcoin advocate Mark Cuban with “multiple questions” about the industry. 

But Harris has also never once made a public statement about crypto. Alas, the hope that her first statements on the subject might come live onstage at a Trump-dominated conference of die-hard Bitcoin maximalists, appeared to be wishful thinking.