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After rumors that he could take into account ending his bid for the White Home, unbiased presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went on the offensive in Nashville on Friday, taking swings at former President Donald Trump and highlighting his plans to strengthen the U.S. greenback with a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Talking lower than 24 hours earlier than former Trump is scheduled to seem on the Bitcoin2024 Convention at Nashville’s Music Metropolis Heart, Kennedy applauded Trump’s new evolution on the digital forex, however urged skepticism as to its legitimacy.
“I perceive that tomorrow President Trump could announce his plan to construct a Bitcoin Fort Knox and authorize the U.S. authorities to purchase 1,000,000 Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset,” Kennedy mentioned.
“I welcome President Trump’s new enthusiasm for Bitcoin. However he’s solely weeks into the Bitcoin dialogue,” he mentioned.
Touting his lengthy historical past as a Bitcoin holder, Kennedy reminded the gang of Trump’s repeated skepticism of Bitcoin, calling him “overtly hostile” to Bitcoin in December 2020, when People suffered hits to their revenue from lockdowns, and declining buying energy due to cash printing throughout the pandemic.
“In 2021, President Trump doubled down and declared that Bitcoin simply looks as if a rip-off. I don’t prefer it as a result of its one other forex competing towards the greenback,” Kennedy mentioned. “I’m comfortable that President Trump has had this evolution. I’m proud that I helped blaze a path that made it simpler for different political leaders to observe.”
However he cautioned the gang to stay skeptical of Trump’s new stance.
“Bitcoin is about our souls. It’s about our values,” Kennedy mentioned. “President Trump wants to clarify how his private values align with these of Bitcoiners. If he doesn’t try this, then we don’t actually have any insurance coverage, will we, that his help of them just isn’t one other ephemeral financial coverage fad du jour.”
Politics and Bitcoin:Is Bitcoin a Republican issue? Why Nashville’s crypto conference has a partisan edge
Kennedy famous rumors that Trump could also be contemplating JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary, if elected, sparking a giant boo from the gang. Trump mentioned this week that he has thought of Dimon or BlackRock CEO Larry Fink for that place.
Kennedy shared some criticism for the Biden administration, asserting that each his opponents within the presidential race “allowed the FBI and spy businesses to suppress our proper to free speech by working with social media corporations to deplatform individuals who criticize authorities insurance policies.”
He mentioned Trump had 4 years to pardon Russell Griffin, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden however didn’t achieve this.
“We have to ask ourselves why?” he mentioned, pledging to pardon all three.
Snowden spoke to Bitcoin attendees just about simply earlier than Kennedy took the stage.
RFJ Jr.’s day 1 pledges
Kennedy instructed an enthusiastic crowd that if elected, he would signal an govt order on his first day in workplace to switch the 200,000 Bitcoin held by america to the U.S. Treasury to be held as a strategic reserve asset.
He additionally pledged a second order to direct the U.S. Treasury to buy 550 Bitcoin day by day till the U.S. Treasury is in possession of a reserve of 4 million Bitcoins, to deliver the U.S. Bitcoin reserve to the identical proportion that the U.S. at present maintain of the world’s gold reserves.
“The cascading impacts of those actions will successfully transfer Bitcoin to a valuation of tons of of trillions of {dollars},” he mentioned.
Kennedy additionally pledged to signal an govt order directing the IRS to deal with Bitcoin as an eligible asset for 1031 Trade into actual property — making transactions unreportable and by extension nontaxable — which prompted a roar of approval from the gang.
“Transactional freedom is simply as essential as freedom of expression and the First Modification,” he mentioned, criticizing the Canadian authorities’s transfer to freeze financial institution accounts of truckers who protested Canadian vaccine mandates.
“None of those truckers was charged with something, and but the federal government was capable of shut down their financial institution accounts,” he mentioned. “They couldn’t pay their mortgages.”
Bitcoin to repair the system ‘forex of hope’
On the marketing campaign path, Kennedy mentioned he’s heard from older People slicing their prescription capsules in half to make them final, and others “selecting between gasoline, dwelling heating oil and meals.”
With out implementing insurance policies to cement the worth of the greenback — like shopping for a Bitcoin commonplace, he mentioned — the U.S. economic system will proceed to deteriorate.
“People immediately are being pressured to make these purchases as a result of our cash is damaged,” he mentioned. “Bitcoin is a know-how for freedom, or optimism or independence or democracy and transparency: it’s the forex of hope.”
Echoing the unbiased basis of his marketing campaign, Kennedy pledged his loyalty can be to ideas, not social gathering, if elected.
“I don’t consider myself as pink or blue and even purple — these are the colours of political events,” he mentioned. “As an alternative, I consider myself as orange — that’s the colour of freedom.”
Big cheers rang out from the gang, which stood in approval.
“It’s true that President Trump has orange hair,” he mentioned, prompting amusing from the gang. “I can solely admire him for that from afar. I am going to by no means be capable to match him on that. That may be a actually nice begin. However I’ve an orange coronary heart.”
Vivian Jones covers state authorities and politics for The Tennessean. Attain her atvjones@tennessean.com or on X at @Vivian_E_Jones.
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