Former President Donald Trump isn’t exactly on board with cryptocurrency becoming a main form of currency in the United States, valuing the U.S. dollar over anything else.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Trump said the U.S. needs to be “very careful” when it comes to cryptocurrency since, he said, China is developing a cryptocurrency to take over all the global markets.
- “I’m a big fan of our currency and I don’t want to have other currencies coming out and hurting or demeaning the dollar in any way,” Trump said.
- “If you look at a monetary system based on the dollar, if you start losing credibility, all of a sudden you’re going to lose that strong monetary system,” he said. “We have to be very careful about that.”
Trump has long been a critic of cryptocurrency. He once tweeted as president that bitcoin and other crypto tokens can create unlawful behavior.
- “I am not a fan of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”
Trump told Fox Business in an interview in June 2021 that bitcoin “seemed like a scam” and he would advise against investing in it.
- “The currency of this world should be the dollar. And I don’t think we should have all of the Bitcoins of the world out there. I think they should regulate them very, very high,” Trump said, per Fox Business. “It takes the edge off of the dollar and the importance of the dollar.”
Trump comments come as the U.S. government is seeking ways to regulate cryptocurrency since it’s sort of a Wild West at the moment. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner Hester Peirce said recently that there needs to be more regulatory clarify on cryptocurrency.
- “It is disconcerting to me that for three years now I’ve been asking for regulatory clarity, and we can’t seem to provide any,” she told Yahoo Finance Live. “I think this is really becoming a huge barrier to this industry being able to develop in a way that’s safe, but also in a way that allows innovation to happen. And it’s a real shame to me that we are not just taking up the mantle as regulators to develop a regulatory framework.”