Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is bullish on Bitcoin, especially after Grayscale’s decisive court victory over the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday.
Always a state skeptic, the conservative entrepreneur claims the “shadow government” in Washington is “out of control,” with federal courts being the last bastion against “the unlawful rogue behaviors of three-letter government agencies.” In Grayscale’s case, the court delivered.
“This decision is strong and clears a path to keep Bitcoin and blockchain innovation in the U.S. instead of overseas,” Ramaswamy posted on Twitter on Wednesday. “But this should have never reached the courts in the first place.”
Grayscale’s lawsuit accused the SEC of arbitrarily rejecting its ETF application despite approving numerous similar products in the form of Bitcoin futures ETFs.
As Vivek noted, courts have been on crypto’s side over the past two months. Besides ruling that the SEC’s denial of Grayscale’s ETF is “arbitrary and capricious,” the judiciary also favored Ripple over the SEC in July by ruling that XRP is not a security.
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Eight Republican candidates are gearing up to take the debate stage tonight as the early 2024 presidential election cycle reaches a pivotal point. Former President and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump—who owns some Ethereum and has his own NFT collection—will be notably absent, electing to skip the chit-chat in lieu of a pre-recorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Twitter. Trump also used Twitter in 2019 to say that “he’s not a big fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurren...
Vivek’s comments echo those of leaders across the crypto industry who have repeatedly warned that the SEC’s “regulation by enforcement” approach will scare crypto businesses and innovators offshore.
They also reflect the expressed views of a handful of crypto-supportive Republican congressmen who wish to see SEC Chairman Gary Gensler fired from his job. In April, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) told Gensler he was an “incompetent cop on the beat,” helping drive crypto into communist China.
Like Ramaswamy, Coinbase has also recognized that it will need to achieve clarity from the courts to establish a clear understanding of crypto’s relationship with securities law.
As is increasingly common for political candidates, Vivek has wasted no time singing Bitcoin’s praises during his campaign. At Bitcoin 2023, he criticized CBDCs and blasted the Biden administration’s attempts to apply a 30% excise tax on Bitcoin miners. “Thomas Jefferson, he would’ve been mining for Bitcoin today, I have little doubt about that,” he said at the time.
That said, Vivek has also pushed back against the religious reverence some crypto enthusiasts have for the asset. In a conversation with Bitcoin Standard author Saifedean Ammous earlier this year, he stressed that not all problems boil down to the money printer.
“It’s a problem, but there are so many other problems that have nothing to do with this,” he told the author.
