"Being with a king is like being with a tiger": The encryption voters who are heavily betting on Trump may stab this industry in the back.

Written by: Ben Schiller, CoinDesk

Compiled by: Mensh, ChainCatcher

This year, the crypto industry finally has its own “friend,” and his name is Donald Trump. For many years, this industry has been striving to find a political spokesperson, someone who can guide its liberation of thought and bring its ideas to a broader audience. Now, that person is Trump.

He stood on the stage of the Nashville Bitcoin Conference and spoke about how much he likes people in the crypto industry. He announced the establishment of a Bitcoin strategic reserve. He promised to release Ross Ulbricht. He distributed hamburgers at PubKey in New York. He even founded his own DeFi project – World Liberty Financial, and developed a set of internal management models (what better way to show his loyalty to cryptocurrency than this?).

Trump said what cryptocurrency wanted to hear and did what cryptocurrency wanted to do, thus attracting millions of dollars in donations. The loudmouths rallied for him, while cultural warriors expressed hatred in the performance. He occupies the political space that the Biden administration and Harris’s campaign team could have taken, if they weren’t so submissive to the Warren wing. Everything he says is right, because Trump always says what people want him to say. He fits perfectly with the goals of the crypto party, as his politics can adapt to any situation, and the crypto party is in dire need of a friend.

I have to admit that all of this makes me personally uncomfortable, not because I have any fondness for Harris, but because Trump has long been an unreasonable friend. He can easily take an entirely opposite stance on cryptocurrency if it benefits him, and he has already done so. I am very concerned about Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency because I find it hard to believe that Trump aligns with the principles that attract me to cryptocurrency.

So, as an industry, what are the three reasons we should be vigilant about?

Trump may not fulfill his promises.

Many White House officials during Trump’s first presidential term talked about his unprincipled nature. His former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, said he fits the definition of a fascist: someone who is willing to overturn constitutional norms to achieve their own goals.

Here is what a former Trump White House official said this morning:

John Mitnick stated: Trump is reckless, irritable, vengeful, narcissistic, and does not respect the Constitution and the rule of law; Trump is not a conservative, he is more like a dictator and a fascist driven by personal interests. He does not care about you and your family as he claims, he only cares about himself.

Honestly, isn’t this something we should be worried about? Aligning the crypto industry with an unreliable person, isn’t that strange? Crypto should abhor single points of failure, yet it has embraced personality cults, isn’t that peculiar?

Trump must regard the issue of cryptocurrency as his own in order to become a politician in the cryptocurrency space. Harris and his team have occasionally engaged with cryptocurrency over the past few months, indicating that they might play a gray area on this issue. This summer, Trump clearly stated that he would not deal with Democrats when engaging with participants in the cryptocurrency dance. Why?

Because Trump has to be that person: he won’t share this issue with the Democrats. That’s how it is in Nashville. Elon Musk was expected to have a conversation with Trump at the Bitcoin conference. However, according to an insider and CoinDesk’s tracking of Musk’s private jet, he turned around and left when Trump was unwilling to share the stage with him. Trump needs to be that person.

It is certain that the Democrats have abandoned cryptocurrency themselves. This starts with mining; after the industry returned to the United States, all new plants went to red states. The Democrats began to view Bitcoin mining as an illegal activity harmful to the environment, while Texas and other states saw it as part of the grid flexibility plan. Personally, I fully support incorporating mining into the grid, and it is foolish for Democrats to ban mining and lose this industry.

But the interesting question is, how would Trump react if the Democratic Party really started to seriously support cryptocurrency.

Alienate non-party members

In a bid for power and relevance, cryptocurrencies have allied with the Republican Party. It doesn’t often say so openly, but it has done so. The people managing its campaign teams are all Republicans. Most of the lower-tier candidates it favors are Republicans. When organizations like Stand With Crypto urge people to vote, you know they won’t support voting for Senator Elizabeth Warren.

These campaign groups do not always explicitly state their preferences. But their allies do, and the effect is often exclusionary. For example, here is former Messari CEO Ryan Selkis discussing his feelings about today’s liberal white women.

This is a free country, and Selkis can say whatever he wants. He might even think that what he is saying is brave. But, seriously, does this benefit cryptocurrency? Is such language in line with the goal of popularizing cryptocurrency? Wouldn’t liberal white women, along with other groups that Ryan has defamed around the clock for the past six months, be offended? Would they think that cryptocurrency is made up of villains like Selkis? If you want to build a broad crypto movement, you certainly don’t want to be at odds with women.

Cryptocurrency will be linked to policies unrelated to cryptocurrency.

Earlier this year, when I first heard the term “single-issue voter” related to cryptocurrency, I immediately thought of “BS.” How can you support a candidate or party on a single issue? Electoral politics doesn’t work that way. When you support someone like Trump, you automatically support a broad range of policies.

Therefore, when crypto offered Trump 10 million dollars to reinterpret the “Howey Test”, it was in support of the “peace agreement” (also known as surrender) on the Ukraine issue, mass deportations, opposition to abortion, and transgender rights (not in any particular order, just a few of Trump’s policies). From a cultural and social perspective, is this the outcome that cryptocurrency desires?

Caution is the mother of safety. The Biden administration and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s opposition to cryptocurrency over the past three years has been detrimental to the cryptocurrency industry, which must respond. However, if this election aligns with a person named Trump, it could bring about a whole new set of unforeseen harms.