Well, that was certainly a choice. Amy and I posted over on Pivot to AI about what Mr Trump would mean for AI — surprisingly little, it’s not like Harris was going to regulate tech much either — with a postscript for the crypto followers:
For our crypto readers, the bitcoin price hit a new all-time high today — and not a soul cares. Crypto has the same problem as AI: its fundamentals still suck. The crypto crew may get some regulatory relief from a Trump administration, but the general public still thinks they’re a bunch of crooks and isn’t keen to put its dollars into their magic beans. Trump promised crypto the world too, but we don’t expect him to bother much with following through there either.
I’ve had zero calls or enquiries of any sort. Nobody cares about bitcoin any more.
Trump is a shallow gangster. He listens to whatever the last guy who spoke to him said, and the guys speaking to him are his fellow billionaires. He has a track record of forgetting his promises as soon as he can.
Trump is also clearly going senile, and the distasteful robotic construct known as J. D. Vance is right there to step up. But Vance doesn’t really care either. Mostly Vance is Silicon Valley’s boy and will do what they want.
Crypto may be allowed to work as tax evasion for the very rich. This still won’t bring back the public at this stage. If you’re still a hodler, then, as usual, I advise you to cash out at least your cash basis.
Matt Levine’s column yesterday started with the fundamental issue — the rule of law holds precisely as long as those enacting it can be bothered. Finance is an extremely elaborate construct and quite a lot of the market’s confidence is that you can trust in the structure of regulations and the financial engineering built atop them. All of that is off the board now at the whim of a shallow gangster. “Maybe it’s fine though.” [Bloomberg, archive]
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I think it is very revealing that crypto PAC sponsored ads did not mention cryptocurrency. This makes the industry seem disingenuous when claiming the success of its preferred candidates says anything about public support of cryptocurrency.