US presidential candidate Trump announced at a Bitcoin conference last Saturday that if he is elected president, he will establish a strategic reserve of Bitcoin. However, Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman expressed strong doubts about this, criticizing Bitcoin as economically useless and accusing Trump of supporting industries that are full of scandals, destroy value, and harm the environment.
(Background: Trump vows not to sell the US government’s Bitcoin, but things are not as simple as he thinks)
US presidential candidate Donald Trump attended a Bitcoin conference last Saturday and presented his views on the cryptocurrency industry to many Bitcoin supporters. He stated that if elected president, he will establish a national strategic reserve of Bitcoin, never sell the Bitcoin owned by the US government, and called those attacking cryptocurrencies “left-wing fascist elements.”
However, in a recent article in The New York Times, Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman expressed deep skepticism about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, as well as concerns about their growing influence in American politics.
Krugman first emphasized the economic uselessness of Bitcoin, stating:
Krugman criticized the Republican Party’s strong support for cryptocurrencies, pointing out that although Trump previously called Bitcoin a scam against the US dollar, he is now a staunch advocate of Bitcoin, aligned with Trump’s deputy J.D. Vance and some tech billionaires.
Krugman pointed out that Vance has proposed legislation favorable to the cryptocurrency industry and has received support from tech giants like Peter Thiel. Thiel’s Founders Fund has invested $200 million in cryptocurrencies, but Krugman warned that this tech industry trend, while seemingly populist, ultimately serves the interests of a few wealthy individuals and masks the questionable economic value and potential risks of cryptocurrencies.
Questioning Trump’s relief of industries full of scandals, Krugman also stated that many advocates of cryptocurrencies now seem to believe that they can obtain crucial political support through Trump. They have successfully included some of their most important wishes in the 2024 Republican Party platform, which mentions that “Republicans will end the illegal and un-American suppression of cryptocurrencies by Democrats and oppose the creation of CBDC.”