Why Trump is Pro-Crypto | David Bailey

I thought politics is where you show up and you figure out what the voters want and then you make promises to the voters that if you elect me I'm going to achieve these things for you and if you talk to the right po part of the population and they make up a large enough percentage of the voter base then you get elected I thought that was like the whole point of an election I don't know what else is supposed to be welcome to bank list where we explore the frontier of Internet money and internet Finance today on the show we are hosting David Bailey of Bitcoin

media Bitcoin magazine Fame this is the organization that just finished throwing the Bitcoin 2024 conference uh David has been with Bitcoin media since his Inception uh so he knows a thing or two about everything in the world of Bitcoin uh and he's also been at the Forefront of the world of politics where Bitcoin has been meaningfully intersecting with the Trump Administration uh I think David Bailey is one of the closest individuals to the Trump Administration uh and watched that relationship blossom into Donald Trump speaking at the Bitcoin conference 2024 for a solid 45

minutes Ryan what's your think of this episode yeah I thought it was interesting I think my main objective for this episode was trying to figure out like why in the world like how in the world Trump pivoted to Pro crypto Pro crypto position very publicly and how he found himself at a Bitcoin conference uh spending 45 minutes really saying all of the things that the crypto Community particularly the Bitcoin Community but just in general the crypto Community wanted to hear like how did that happen cuz that's a massive transformation that's like nothing that has ever happened in crypto before and

then like I wanted to hear if David thought um he was genuine in that like he would keep these campaign promises if elected and then also just like any takes on okay uh are you a single issue voter like what's the case for that uh do you think kamla and the Democrats will pivot at some point or is that ship already sailed is it over like how do you think about the game theory of all of this so I feel like I got all of those uh questions answered in in the body of this podcast yeah in no surprise say listener but David Bailey is a very big Trump supporter uh if you are

watching this on YouTube you'll notice his very big red hat that says make Bitcoin great again which I think is just the perfect intersection between somebody who is very bullish on bitcoin and also very bullish on Donald Trump so this is also a peak into the brain of uh somebody who's bullish in both camps so let's go ahead and get right into the episode with David Bailey from Bitcoin media but first a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors bankless Nation I'm super stoked to introduce to David Bailey the CEO and co-founder of Bitcoin media which you might also know as Bitcoin magazine Bitcoin media hosts the annual Bitcoin

conference every year starting in 2019 in San Francisco moving to Miami in the postco era and now this last year's Bitcoin conference just concluded in Nashville after being perhaps one of the most significant in real life crypto events to have ever been held especially with Donald Trump's 45 minute speech about all the ways that he wants to promote the Bitcoin industry David welcome to bank list hey thank you for having me on the show really excited to have have this conversation and I think we're just two weeks after Bitcoin 2024 may maybe three I know that that's got to be probably the most busiest time in

your life uh every single year whenever that comes around but now now that that's well in the rearview mirror Just Thoughts Reflections now that you've like processed everything like give us your give us your your Reflections upon the events that were yeah I mean I think uh generally speaking it's the most successful show we've done it reminds me of uh Bitcoin 2021 which was where K announced Bitcoin legal Tinder and so like the energy coming off of that event was just like through the roof and the ticket sales for the 2022 were were uh

huge and it's pretty similar for for this event so the energy levels have been high the momentum coming out of the conference has been uh all-time highs I mean we're we've heard from all sorts of interesting people and and different nations and all sorts of stuff um I think the the Trump moment is just like love him or hate him it's it's really hard to quantify um how much attention he generates um and then yeah the ticket sales for 2025 are the highest you know we've ever had um a year out from an

event so the the feedback survey feedback from attendees was that this is the best conference we've ever done so I don't know it feels um new but like you know when we did 20121 it was like our second conference we' had ever done so it was like kind of a little bit of a [ __ ] show at the same time this one uh it had the scale um and it had like the excitement but also like my our team knows what we're doing now so anyway we're we're very pleased with the conference overall and trying to kind of

scope what the future of that event looks like I think we can grow that conference into one of the biggest conferences in the world and so that's really that's that's the vision of where we want to take it like it the a CES um of of money um you know of Bitcoin I mean Bitcoin it deserves to have the biggest conference in the world you know I mean it's the biggest idea in the world so um like you know next year in Vegas I hope we can get to like 40,000 50,000 people and then you know we'll see where we can go from there but yeah

we we want to just keep going bigger every year anyone who pays attention to the conference industry knows that the the time to start planning the next conference is right after the previous conference ends uh so yeah already alluding to like 2025 being planned for 2024 when was it obvious that like politics was going to become such a such a big part a big pillar of the actual content like how how quickly when did that happened do you remember you know I'd probably say the start of the year so um you know and we jokingly have

called the conference like the Bitcoin National Convention um and then the timing of it we got the timing just right so where the the conference landed in between the RNC uh and we have the DNC coming up in August so like we kind like fit right in between the two and I think you know the the orange party as we're like you know Cally calling it like really is um the embodiment of what I would say is like the the ideas of

libertarian party um except with money and a focus on on winning and achieving like the goals that the Libertarians had so I I kind of feel like in some ways Bitcoin killed the libertarian party um because it just sucked all of the energy and enthusiasm out of it and kind of channeled it into this new community that got formed and created and so um yeah I know the the Bitcoin conference is like the home of the orange party and you know it's very symbolic that we had the orange man himself uh kind of you

know uh Crown it so can can we talk about that so how did that come about by the way like so how did you get Trump to speak at Bitcoin 2024 it's like by the way it's just some context here too what's crazy about this is how many weeks after the assassination attempt was this this two weeks two weeks after so I just can't imagine the logistics behind just like security of pulling this off anyway just like tell us about

this what how did you get Donald Trump there and like what like what yeah what was the how did all this happen so um I I have a friend friend who has a a mutual um relationship with someone who's in the Trump orbit I won't I won't doxs them here but um uh she was able to kind of open up the initial conversation and then uh it it became you know it was really a six-month process or maybe a

four-month process of back and forth um where like basically it started with us trying to get them for the conference and then it was like very clear they didn't really know a lot about the topic or the the industry or um you know was just a very rudimentary understanding and so we when say they you talk to like campaign people just the people behind Trump sort of thing yeah yeah I I like the the he has a core team and his core team is a very small team and it's like they they run that campaign like a

startup so like where like there might be you know hundreds of decision makers at like the Harris campaign um and there there might be thousands of people that work there at like you know the Trump campaign it is like 10 people that are like the core team and and then like the the total apparatus might be like it's less than 100 people um you know maybe that's wrong but it feels like it's less than 100 people um at the at the Trump campaign so so yeah so he he runs a pretty lean operation but yeah we got we

got connected into the um campaign uh um managers for Trump and and kind of policy advisers and you know there's a variety of people around the Trump orbit that are pro Bitcoin the Trump family owns Bitcoin so it wasn't like singularly our effort you know there's there was a lot of kind of people in the mix but you know we kind of had to take charge of educating The Campaign on the topic educating The Campaign on the political opportunity that existed both

in like votes and and dollars that could be raised and then you know working with the campaign to highlight like what is the policy platform that they could they could take on that would in excite the the base and like turn out votes but also was consistent and aligned with uh the president's political platform um which is really you know an American first conservative uh platform and so you know the cool thing about Bitcoin is that you know it's it's a technology and you can explain it in a lot of different

ways and you know if if somebody wanted to take what's the conservative case for the internet and what's like you know the progressive case for the internet you could make both cases um and so bitcoin's kind of the same way and and we were able to kind of put together uh uh a variety of of policy items that uh we pitched them on and some of them they liked some of them they didn't like but they kind of picked what worked for them um and then like so as we're kind of like making this incremental progress it resulted in

a meeting with Trump um uh at Trump Tower and then um from there we put together a mining round table with all the Bitcoin miners in Mara Lago that went really well um and the president got pretty hyped about Bitcoin mining and how it fits into his energy platform which he's going he's like an energy die hard he's an energy Maxi you could say um and so uh then from there uh we were able to go through a very uh intense process um of of getting him signed on

to the conference which like was roller coaster of itself um and then right when we got him signed on to the conference um there was the assassination attempt so you know we were like oh [ __ ] he's out like this is over and uh I was watching the the the video uh stream like live while it happened and so when he like drops I'm like oh [ __ ] like there's like you know I mean it's it's a horrific situation but I'm also thinking

from the business perspective of like you know oh [ __ ] so um yeah yeah so and then the guy's just a badass he's an absolute badass um you know when you when you spend time with him he's extremely charismatic um it makes sense why he is like the presidential Contender um he is very funny and he is completely unrelenting so it's like I mean he would have it no other way than to have like than to be

able to tell an would be assassin [ __ ] you I'm you're not going to affect me at all um and so uh and there's a lot of people in his orbit that after that happened they're like you need to go into a basement like there's going to be people coming to assassinate you from like they're they are trying to take you out and like you know in the polls at that moment I mean he was dominating so it was like okay we just need to go into mode of like keep you alive all the way through the the campaign and um he was like no so you know he's he's the

ultimate decision maker for his campaign and you know he wanted to go on the path not change a single um thing about the schedule and just like fight so a lot of respect for for him on that so as you and the the Trump campaign were kind of like warming up to each other you alluded to that that meeting with the North American Bitcoin miners maybe that was the moment where the campaign really got comfortable with uh speaking at at the Bitcoin conference just becoming becoming bitcoiner was that really the

moment or were there were there other moments well where there was a big inflection point where I would say it was like a a domino effect of like little winds that kept like kind of like leveling up to bigger wins the mar Lago moment was a big moment of credibility just because it was like okay are these guys real is this industry real and then they're sitting down my like the Bitcoin miners like say what you want about mining they're probably the most legit part of our industry I mean they're like running real facilities they employ like lots of people doing like blue collar infrastructure jobs like it's like super

impressive when you just hear the like the barebone facts of how big these operations have gotten and how it's like truly affecting like American infrastructure energy infrastructure um and the amount of dollars that we're talking about I mean they're doing Billion Dollar Plus investments into American infrastructure so um it was probably the best part of the industry that could represent us just because it was it's a very real tangible part of the industry and I mean we're able to show them chips and like bring some like showand tell type elements where we're like showing them how it works and

um and it was just very aligned with this platform but we're we're doing more round taes I think right now we're working on putting together a round table with the president on the SEC um and you know we're not just it's not a Bitcoin only um uh campaign here it's Bitcoin and crypto so we're working with our crypto counterparts like we're aligned on 90% of the issues and so like it's one team that's trying to like Drive uh Trump to a successful uh presidency um um and yeah we're working

with everyone that we can who's who's aligned with us on that so it's a Bitcoin and uh crypto policy then and like what are the wins for Trump so you mentioned kind of energy infrastructure that's kind of a win like what else right because like this is sort of a pivot uh for Trump from his 2020 campaign where crypto really didn't come up you could argue that like you know some would make the argument that um there was some hostility towards uh crypto in the previous Administration certainly um Secretary of

the Treasury Steve munin uh on his way out like did some nefarious things it seemed like and uh Trump has some Tweets in the past which you could interpret as being like not pro crypto let's say maybe anti- crypto so I think to a lot of people this seemed like a a pivot uh in the direction of of of crypto but also a very clear pivot like Trump really is trying to be and wants to become the pro crypto president and use it as a um what do they call a wedge issue right in political parliament

against um against now Harris then Biden so like what what are the wins on the the the Trump campaign side for being pro pro crypto well first on the on the pivot question I I would push back on that and just that that's kind of just the natural progression that anyone has when they get into Bitcoin or crypto I mean Michael sailor's first tweet on the topic was [ __ ] on bitcoin um so you know the the the bigger the cynic like you know the harder they fall in love uh uh so to speak so you know we all

start skeptical and then as we learn more as we see it come back from the death Time and Time and Time Again eventually you start to appreciate it from a different perspective you know Donald Trump also he created nfts and ordinals you know that have sold amazingly well he sold real estate for Bitcoin so the man has like issued his own nft collection he has you know accepted Bitcoin for payment owns Bitcoin coin you know he like in so many ways he was like set up to be uh the

Bitcoin and crypto president um to your question about the winds that are out there so you know it is perfectly aligned with his energy policy very much has an American first uh position and he sees other countries like the Middle East like China who are uh approving their own ETFs who have a large percentage of the of mining infrastructure who are maybe in secret accumulating large positions of Bitcoin and you know he is not a fan of of uh chasing offshore American innovation uh

into the hands of what he considers our our adversaries um and so or our Frenemies maybe I don't know what the right term political term is so he he sees an opportunity here um to ensure that the next Silicon Valley is built in America um and you know he looks at Bitcoin and you know uh his campaign looks at bit coin is you know initially there was like okay is this something that could negatively affect the dollar now you know as they've come to

appreciate it more it's like if anything Bitcoin gives longevity uh to the dollar it's like you know gold didn't disrupt the US dollar in fact the best thing that ever happened for the American dollar was for for gold all the central banks of the world to custody their gold in the United States so uh I think the the uh imagery of of a digital Fort Knox that is custody um Bitcoin and digital Assets in the United States uh um

resonated I guess with the president and then you know I think he's also he's an entrepreneur so he's very shrewd about seeing opportunity where others don't and so I think he came to appreciate how big of a constituency Bitcoin and crypto now represent which it's huge in the United States even if you take like let's take the numbers that are out there and we give them a % haircut because they're you know we're giving most favorable numbers it's still a huge number and so um you know Trump is someone who who bases his political

priorities also off of um the crowd like off of like what he gets feedback on which I think is like a very natural kind of old school political like it's not he doesn't go out and do polling per se it's like he brings up an idea he mentions a topic and if a lot of people respond really positively to it then he like says it more and and he kind of bases it off of like okay I have 100 conversations in a day you know if 30 of them are about this then this is something that a lot of people care about and so when he started talking

about Bitcoin and crypto a lot of people started approaching him about it and so he was like kind of taken back by how popular this had gotten as a as a topic um it's same maybe with like you know uh no tax on tips you know he says that maybe he just like throwing that out there as an idea people respond really positively to it it's like okay no tags on tips that's the policy so I think you know it's the same for you know crypto and Bitcoin and you know in his own words like uh he thinks that like our voting constituency is as big or bigger

than gun owners or Evangelical Christians and he thinks we're you know as passionate or more passionate than those those constituencies so when you think about how big of a topic is guns in the United States how big of a topic is is you know abortion in the United States those are like two of the defining political battle lines uh between the parties and so you know if he sees our constituency of a similar size and scale then then our issues should um consume

as much oxygen as those other issues which I think is like a pretty staggering view to take on our industry I mean we're so far away from what your view on Bitcoin mining is being like at the same level of like what the nation thinks about you know gun rights in America so yeah yeah one line that uh popped out to me during the the Trump speech at at Bitcoin 2024 was the um high IQ crowd uh quip do you know where that how that got into his brain what

was this for people who didn't see that part he called it he called everyone in the audience high IQ just it was a high IQ like audience or something like this he just called everyone like listening high IQ do you know how that do you know where he got that idea from no I don't I think it's just because like the people in his orbit that are talking to him about this topic like we're so passionate and we know so much about this topic and it's such a what's the word um not Byzantine esoteric it's just yeah it's esoteric it's like okay

let's like explain Bitcoin and it's like okay let's start with like the the invention of like gold you know like seashells you know it's just like the [ __ ] so uh yeah it's an esoteric topic and I think um and we're so passionate about it that once you engage you like won't let you disengage like we're like locked in you know so um yeah I think that's right actually haven't heard the speech I need to go listen to the speech cuz like I was backstage listening to it

and the tension backstage was so like like secret secret service I'm sure like looking at you I'm no you know there was an hour hourong delay before it started because somebody like snuck through security and they're having I don't know if yall know this story I can I can tell the story fun we don't know the story this guy named Jordy Montes who's a lightning developer um uh was caught on camera sneaking past Secret Service um and you know of course as soon as he sinks pass like they have like the photo

of him and everything what do you mean what does that look like he's just like dodg the metal detector going in or something or yeah he he was able to like whisk in through the you know how the exit were you at the the conference no I couldn't make it no guys dude D sorry right R Ryan never ever goes to any conference ever so it's actually only my bad yeah it's actually David hoffin that's got a you know no big deal guys we were only trying to make history there so there was like an exit only

area that you could come out and after we did we did a round table downstairs with some people from the industry with the president and they got like whis up you know it was like a pretty far walk and so we like had them escorted up into the into the uh facilities because basically like to get into the room um there was a Max Capacity and then when they closed the doors like they were closed and so they're coming in through like the exit effectively and somebody just saw the opportunity to jump in the like the crowd there's like 30 of them and just go in with them so that's how

it happened so so this one guy delayed the speech by an hour yeah so once he got in and there trying to find him uh in the crowd and we were like Jordy montz like please come to the exit um they're like pulling up like a camera footage from the facility of like what this guy's been doing and evidently he had like a lighter with him that he didn't want confiscated from security and so he hid it in the building and so they see him like hiding something small in building like okay you know like obviously this guy's got a bomb or something and then um they I like

identify they detain him they were able to get him and then they like go and check his his room uh his hotel room and uh he has like a backpack full like one change of clothes in a backpack and like like a bunch of cash or something and so it's like okay every like this guy's a terrorist like red alarm like flag is being like going off right and backstage the security is like so tense that like I'm pretty sure like if you just like jumped like too like suddenly you just

be [ __ ] shot right it was very intense um so yeah the tension was pretty strong backstage and so like I only heard like part of it and I'm like dealing with different like things that are unfolding and then um but then every time the crowd like Roars with some like massive Applause and I'm like okay well what just happened and people are telling me the sound bites so I haven't heard the whole speech yet but the um I've heard the highlights of the speech you could say uh one of the big parts of the speech was the the Gary gendler comment I think that was like

probably the the loudest one uh and this this com ation actually went around in some ethereum circles where some some of the most hardcore bitcoiners uh don't really care about any of the SEC Shenanigans as it relates to anything below Bitcoin because like what what do they care we definitely care there's a lot of issues that that Gary ginzler screwing the Bitcoin community over on like what like he's blocked the IPOs of a bunch of different companies he's he's blocked um you know if you are a public company you want to buy Bitcoin and you need to issue um uh

some sort of um uh disclosures they wait out the disclosure period for the maximum amount of time 90 days um like they they slow down all sorts of public market activity for our IND industry they've blocked m&a activity they've blocked all the spacks that were supposed to happen um you know we had to sue them over the the ETF approval so you know all sorts of stuff what did he say about Gensler for again people who didn't he's going to fire him I'm gonna fire and Crowd Goes

Wild yeah yeah and it was one of those things where you you watched him have like a learning moment in real time where he was like was actually taken aback about like how loud the crowd got and so he just like stopped and like said it exactly he just stopped and like said it a second time yeah no I I was I was hoping he was gonna be like Gary guinsler you're fired but he didn't go like full Apprentice on him but uh you know it was like yeah like he there was all sorts of things

that that he walked away from the conference like really surprised by that was definitely one of them um he walked away I think being kind of Blown Away by how many people were there um and how much energy there was in the room I mean this was like electric I mean that's really the only way to describe it and there were so many people I mean it was the Overflow rooms were packed the the I mean literally every stage was packed out people listening to this we had 22,000 people there and um and when he got there and we did the round table

it's not like it was just like you're Joe Schmo yeah there was like we had lots of joeo but it was like lots of billionaires lots of billionaires and billionaires that he knew you know we had this round table I won't say any of the participants names but like he was surprised by multiple people who had joined the round table and he's like oh you're into this and he was like yeah I'm I'm into this really big Mr President he's like wow then you're into this he was like yeah I'm into it huge was like he was like just kind of bewildered so he walked away from the

conference just like uh I think very impressed with the industry as a whole that this is something that that you know people that he trusts really believe in uh is filled full of young people very passionate people um and that it's gotten quite large and successful and he those are you know he wants to be a part of it yeah I got to imagine as he's like looking out at the crowd it's like a different type of crowd than come to his like his uh regular political events right I mean you probably don't have a light developer you know of the type that that get busted by the Secret Service you know come come to a typical Trump

campaign rally so you look out and it's like just different faces than you typically see I imagine it skews uh younger uh I imagine it skews like I don't know I don't know if you can delineate who's kind of like nerdy Tech person but I'm sure it skews in that direction as well so I'm sure his Spidey senses are just like tingling like oh wow this is new I didn't know about this cohort that I can go reach I like one of the other things he said during his speech David was uh about um building out a strategic Reserve uh of Bitcoin

actually and I don't know I mean there was a lumus speech given senator lumus who also talked about this in in an actual legislative Bill and then there was RFK Jr who talked and he had an actual amount of Bitcoin that he planned to buy it was like escalated to as much as 5% of total Supply or something so I don't know you know Michael sailor might need to beat the US government to that if comes to fruition but Trump trump had a take too I think it was mainly around at least keeping the Bitcoin it was it it was 20% it was 20 it was 20% okay so

which is how much of the gold we have which is a good intellectual basis uh for how much Bitcoin we should own but it's also kind of shocking that America has 20% of the gold like it's that is shocking so to be clear though uh Trump in his speech what did he say 20% of Bitcoin Supply no no not Trump no Trump didn't say that I'm saying RFK RFK did okay Trump said basically we should keep what we have in the least right and build out a Bitcoin strategic Reserve I don't know if he get more I expect him to expand upon that topic at some point in time

down the road okay um with how much America should have and and what it should look like but I he he was relatively broad Strokes in his in his speech in Nashville so this goes to the question David like so we're crypto people right Bitcoin people we don't traditionally like we don't trust Authority we don't traditionally uh trust politicians like I think famously crypto's kind of stayed out of politics maybe to our detriment for a long time you can't trust them right I don't know how many crypto people even participate in elections or vote but like sort of

jaded about the whole topic you know you definitely can't trust politicians so I I I fully agree with that okay so so let's talk about this How likely is Trump to keep these campaign uh you know promises or like some portion of these campaign uh promises how do you think about that uh it's proportional to the amount of impact that we as vot as we as a constituency make in the election so the the the the bigger of an impact we make the bigger of a deciding factor we are the greater the likelihood of the

scope of promises are kept and expanded upon so you know it's like uh some of the stuff that's easy I think he's definitely going to do like uh part commuting Ross sentence I think that happens day one I I have no doubt I'll be shocked if it doesn't happen like right away um and and he's got an amazing feedback from donors from voters on that topic that was a huge win for him and and very surprising that it took him to to to say that like I don't know where why who the constituency who's on