Thursday, May 29, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Editor’s note: Este artículo está traducido al inglés.
The loudest applause during Vice President JD Vance’s speech Wednesday at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas came not from unveiling new policies but from celebrating the sweeping reversal by President Donald Trump’s administration of the previous administration’s cryptocurrency regulations.
The moment harked back to last year’s conference in Nashville, Tenn., where Trump pledged to remove Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler — a figure the crypto industry had heavily criticized for what they viewed as regulatory overreach. True to that promise, Gensler stepped down shortly after Trump’s election victory.
“Operation Chokepoint 2.0,” what the bitcoin industry describes as a coordinated effort to de-bank those working in crypto, is dead, Vance told the crowd. That’s “promises made, promises kept,” Bitcoin 2025 organizer David Bailey said before introducing the vice president.
“This is my vow to every single person here,” Vance told thousands packed into a Venetian expo hall. “You will never see this administration trying to handicap your community or diminish the impact it’s had on the economy. Instead, we reject the Biden administration legacy of death by a thousand enforcement actions.”
The event is billed as the “world’s largest bitcoin conference.” It has 35,000 attendees.
The vice president is bullish on the cryptocurrency industry’s future, saying the number of Americans holding bitcoin in the United States will double from 50 million to 100 million in the near future.
For the bitcoin in his wallet, he was happy to see the coin hit a new all-time high in price last week: nearly $112,000.
Cleaning up the last administration’s “wreckage” is the first step in a three-part plan Vance described for the crypto industry. The second step is providing more stability and clarity for “stablecoins,” cryptocurrencies tied to the value of another asset such as gold.
Congress is creating that structure through the GENIUS Act, which Vance said would strengthen the U.S. dollar with USD-backed stablecoins. Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, both Nevada Democrats, helped Republicans get the bill across the 60-vote threshold to end debate last week.
Once that’s complete, it’s about incorporating crypto into the “mainstream” economy through a transparent regulatory system, Vance said.
“The consistent fear I hear is there’s still this perception that digital assets are not welcome in the mainstream economy,” Vance said. “We want our fellow Americans to know crypto and digital assets, in particular bitcoin, are part of the mainstream economy.”
If the United States doesn’t create a system to “unleash innovation,” Vance said it runs the risk of driving the industry out of the country altogether.
The Trump administration has “accomplished a lot, but we have plans to continue to make big progress in this industry and for the American people,” Vance said. “We’re going to need your guidance, we’re going to need your encouragement and at times, yes, because this is politics, our politicians are going to need your pressure.”
The vice president also made sure to highlight bitcoin’s new political strength. When he was running for one of Ohio’s Senate seats in 2022, he saw frustration bubbling about the President Joe Biden administration’s crypto policies, but there was no organization pushing back against it.
The industry was much more mobilized this time around to become one of the most influential in the 2024 election. A report from left-leaning consumer advocacy group Public Citizen found that 44% of all corporate money in last year’s federal elections were from “crypto backers” as of last August.
“You chose to speak up and get involved and I believe you changed the trajectory of our country because of that,” Vance said. “What I’d ask you is to take the momentum of your political involvement in 2024 and carry it forward to 2026 and beyond.
“Don’t ignore politics because, I guarantee you my friends, politics is not going to ignore this community,” Vance said.
[email protected] / 702-990-8923 / @Kyle_Chouinard