From bitcoinmagazine by BRIAN MORGENSTERN

One in four Americans own Bitcoin.

That’s more Americans than are over the age of 65, but how often do you hear candidates talk about senior concerns compared to concerns of crypto owners?

President Donald Trump has been making a concerted effort in the 2024 campaign trail to appeal to Bitcoiners.

At the recent Libertarian National Convention, President Trump vowed to “stop Joe Biden’s crusade to crush crypto,” and assured Bitcoin holders specifically that he supports the right to self-custody.

“I say this with your vote, I will keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from your Bitcoin, and I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency,” President Trump said.

It’s clear which candidate this November is the best choice for Bitcoin owners and the entire industry – President Trump. He appears to see the wisdom of the pro-Bitcoin stances taken by popular leaders around the world, such as Presidents Javier Milei of Argentina and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador

Accordingly, he is staking out a clear position.

Trump acknowledges our right to self-sovereignty, and perhaps no one better understands the value of decentralization, as people have been losing trust in institutions like the government and banks. Trump has been the target of unprecedented lawfare politicizing the justice system, and Trump-affiliated organizations have been debanked and de-platformed.

President Biden, meanwhile, just vetoed legislation that would have ensured a customer’s right to have their preferred regulated financial institution custody their Bitcoin or other digital assets—laughably—in the name of “consumer protection.”

The Biden administration has been extraordinarily hostile to Bitcoin as well as the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem. The administration launched "Operation Choke Point 2.0" whereby regulators effectively instituted new rules via press release instructing banks to stop doing business with companies in the digital asset space. Further, the White House proposed a 30 percent tax on the energy used to mine Bitcoin, which would make it unprofitable and completely uneconomical for the industry to do business in the United States. Their Energy Department also attempted to collect information regarding Bitcoin miners’ energy contracts as a step towards regulating them out of business. The Justice Department even broke with long-standing Treasury Department guidance when it attempted to regulate via court filing to say that self-hosted wallets should be treated as money transmitting businesses. This is all by design. They want to effectively ban the industry.

It all starts to make sense when you consider that the Biden administration has also laid the groundwork for a Central Bank Digital Currency.

Certain politicians support the creation of a CBDC because they desire complete control. They want to be able to track our transactions and tell us how we can and cannot spend our money. Bitcoin represents the polar opposite: freedom from government-driven collectivism and the empowerment of the individual.

To be clear, there are many pro-Bitcoin leaders in the Democratic party, such as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Reps. Ritchie Torres and Wiley Nickel, just to name a few. Over 70 Democrats in the House of Representatives recently voted for favorable market structure legislation. But there needs to be many more.

President Biden has surrendered governance of his administration on these issues to the self-appointed “anti-crypto” Senator Elizabeth Warren and her acolytes. This has resulted in policies that mirror the Chinese Communist Party’s approach to Bitcoin, and anything of which the ruling party disapproves: cut off financial services, attempt to cut off access to energy in the name of environmentalism, impose impossible market regulations, and essentially do anything they can to handicap the Bitcoin network while they work towards the ultimate tool of control over their populace: a CBDC.

Sen. Warren herself has even proposed legislation that would effectively ban Bitcoin mining in the United States by treating miners the same as financial institutions by requiring anti-money laundering standards despite the fact that miners do not custody any customer assets. As she well knows, if there are no Bitcoin miners, there are no Bitcoin transactions, and the path to a CBDC would be much easier without any private alternatives.

The good news for Bitcoiners this November is that they have a clear alternative. This is critical because a whopping one-third of voters say they are weighing candidates’ views on digital assets for their choice in the election.

The choice is clear. President Trump will protect your right to own Bitcoin, to mine Bitcoin, to transact with Bitcoin, and for many of us, to work in the Bitcoin industry. We believe he will support Bitcoin miners’ ability to help revolutionize the finance and energy industries in the United States and maintain American economic leadership for the future. And he will ban a CBDC, protect self-custody, and stop out of control regulators from trying to put us out of business. If you are a Bitcoiner, President Trump is the best candidate this year to, dare I say, Make Bitcoin Great Again in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Brian Morgenstern is the head of public policy for Riot Platforms. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury and White House deputy press secretary.

This is a guest post by Brian Morgenstern. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.