Bitcoin
Trump Bitcoin Conference Fundraiser Tickets Top $844,600 for Nashville Party
Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends a campaign event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., June 22, 2024.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Former president Donald Trump will headline a campaign fundraiser in Nashville alongside the Bitcoin Conference, where a main ticket will cost $844,600 per person.
According to an invitation shared with CNBC, the July 27 event will coincide with Trump’s expected keynote address at the conference, the country’s largest gathering of cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
The top-tier tickets, which include a seat at a roundtable with Trump, are priced at the maximum donation amount allowed for individuals to make to Trump and the Republican Party’s largest joint fundraising committee, known as the Trump Committee 47.
The next tier includes a photo with the former president for $60,000 per person or $100,000 per couple, according to the invitation.
Trump signed on to headline the Music City Center gathering shortly before surviving an assassination attempt on July 13.
A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about his Nashville appearances.
In recent months, Trump has positioned himself as a pro-cryptocurrency candidate for president, a reversal from his previous stance during his time in the White House.
In April, Trump launched his latest collection of non-fungible tokens on the Solana blockchain in April and has been doing increasingly optimistic comments on cryptocurrencies since then.
Trump’s campaign team is accepting donations in digital currencyand he has personally promised to defend the rights of those who choose to self-custody their coins, meaning they are not dependent on a centralized entity like Coinbase to hold their tokens and instead do so themselves in personal cryptocurrency wallets, which are sometimes beyond the reach of the Internal Revenue Service.
Trump also pledged at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington in May to keep Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and “his henchmen” away from bitcoin holders.
Meanwhile, after a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with about a dozen bitcoin mining executives who pledged money and votes to him, Trump declared that all future bitcoins will be minted in the US if he returns to the White House.
On Monday, Republican presidential candidate named Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate — a move seen by many as a net win for the cryptocurrency sector. Vance has advocated for looser regulation of cryptocurrencies and revealed in 2022 that he personally holds bitcoin.
This is in stark contrast to the Biden White House, which has taken a consistently skeptical approach to cryptocurrency regulation. Under Biden, the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its actions in the sector.
In the absence of hard and fast rules from Congress, the US has proven to be one of the most active enforcers of penalties and legal challenges against cryptocurrency companies.
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This election cycle, the cryptocurrency contingent has become an essential conduit for money — and votes.
One day later Trump has named Vance to his running mate, venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have told Andreessen Horowitz employees they plan to make significant donations to political action committees they support From Trump campaign.
“They’ve sued, I think, over 30 of our companies,” Horowitz said. said on an episode of “The Ben & Marc Show”, which introduces the co-founders of a16z.
“They’re losing almost all of these lawsuits, but the problem is that when you’re a startup, you don’t have the money to fight the U.S. government. And so they’re kind of destroying the industry that way,” he said.
Fairshake, a super PAC backed by major crypto companies, is now one of the biggest-spending PACs this election cycle. Of the $160 million in total contributions it has raised, 94% can be traced for just four companies: Ripple, Andreesen Horowitz, Coinbase and Jump Crypto.
In early June in San Francisco, technologists, cryptocurrency executives and venture capitalists paid up to $300,000 per ticket to participate in a fundraiser for Trump that ultimately raised over $12 million.