The crypto crown princes who could ‘win, win, win’ under Trump

Standing under a “Bitcoin 2024” logo at a US crypto conference this summer, Donald Trump likened the audience of “bitcoiners” to the inventors and industrialists who pioneered high-tech industries at the turn of the 20th century.

“You are the modern day Edisons and Wright Brothers and Carnegies and Henry Fords,” he said. “My job will be to set you free . . . And to let you do what Americans do best . . . Win! Win! Win!”

Crypto’s modern tycoons have made a big bet that Trump will follow through on this promise. In the two years since the 2022 crypto crash wiped out many of the digital asset industry’s biggest names, many of the big players who survived have hitched themselves to the Maga movement.

The industry spent tens of millions of dollars backing Trump and targeting perceived enemies in other electoral races, unseating legislators including the chair of the senate banking committee.

Trump has promised a friendlier approach to digital asset markets after years of prosecutions and lawsuits from regulators under the Biden administration. His win and proposed nominations to posts such as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission have propelled bitcoin up more than 40 per cent to more than $100,000.

The Trump rally has already delivered substantial profits for his crypto backers, even before he takes office. These are the executives hoping his return to the White House will usher in a golden era for the industry.

Brian Armstrong

Age: 41

title: chief executive of Coinbase

career: IBM and DELOITTE. Founded Coinbase in 2012

The founder of the best-known American cryptocurrency exchange has hailed Trump’s win as “the dawn of a new era” and has already met the incoming president at Mar-a-Lago to offer his thoughts on potential crypto policy.

Armstrong has been one of the main drivers behind Fairshake, a Super Pac that has funnelled money from wealthy crypto donors to friendly candidates. Its $135mn spend in the run-up to the vote makes it one of the biggest donor groups in this election cycle.

The entrepreneur has tried to tread carefully along political lines during the US election, donating to both Republican and Democrat pro-crypto candidates.

He has argued that his company always tried to follow legal requirements and grew increasingly frustrated with the SEC’s harsh stance on crypto, which culminated in the agency filing a lawsuit that accused Coinbase of failing to register as a securities exchange. 

Armstrong holds 34mn dual class shares in Coinbase, the value of which has surged to $11bn as the company’s stock price has climbed since the US election result. 

Michael Saylor

Age: 59

title: executive chair, MicroStrategy

career: MicroStrategy Co-founder and chief executive 1989 to 2023

Once best known for settling charges in 2000 with the SEC over allegedly misstating MicroStrategy’s earnings for two years, Michael Saylor has become the crypto industry’s most colourful advocate.

In one of the most extraordinary corporate pivots in history, he turned the business software company into the world’s largest corporate owner of bitcoin. With holdings of $43bn of the cryptocurrency, it has become a leveraged proxy for a bet on the token’s price.

Saylor has since used appearances on TV, conferences and social media to promote bitcoin, which he has in the past called “the apex property of the human race” and “an ark of encrypted energy to escape the currency flood”. 

MicroStrategy shares have rocketed 550 per cent this year. “All my best investments were in networks that everyone needed, no one could stop, and few understood. Bitcoin is the monetary network,” he once said.

As the price of bitcoin climbs, Saylor plans even more bitcoin purchases. He has laid out plans to buy $42bn worth in coming years, using MicroStrategy shares to pay for it. “Don’t get left behind”, he wrote on X recently. “Bitcoin is going ballistic”.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss

Ages: 43

title: CO-heads of Gemini cryptocurrency exchange

career: former Olympic rowers, co-founders of WINKLEVOSS CAPITAL MANAGEMENT and GEMINI

Cameron and his twin Tyler Winklevoss — known for their dispute with Mark Zuckerberg about the founding of Facebook — have been long-standing supporters of cryptocurrencies, having bought their first Bitcoin in 2012 when it was worth less than $15.

They were once regarded as relative moderates whose Gemini brand was about trying to follow the rules. However, in the past two years frustration with US regulators has turned into fierce opposition. That was inflamed after the SEC sued Gemini over the legality of its collapsed lending product.

Endorsing Trump earlier this year, Cameron accused the Biden administration and federal regulators of “dismantling our economic way of life and the system that made America the greatest country in the world”. He described departing SEC chair Gary Gensler as “a disgrace who forever tarnished the reputation of the SEC”.

The twins have strongly supported Trump, donating $1mn each in bitcoin to his campaign, spending time with him on the campaign trail and contributing millions to Fairshake. They are now hoping the arrival of Paul Atkins as the SEC chair “will usher in common sense and a do-no-harm approach”.

Paolo Ardoino

Age: 40

title: chief executive of Tether

career: founder of fincluster and chief technology officer at Bitfinex

Tether, a privately run digital dollar, has become the de facto reserve currency for crypto. Its links to Howard Lutnick put Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino steps from Trump’s inner circle.

Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team and nominee for commerce secretary, is the longtime chief executive and majority owner of Cantor Fitzgerald. The Wall Street brokerage owns a 5 per cent stake in Tether, which is also a major client.

Tether has issued more than $138bn in tokens and buys vast quantities of US Treasuries as reserves to back them. Yet its token is frequently cited by law enforcement agencies as being a favoured channel for money launderers and traffickers. 

Ardoino, who joined Tether as chief technology officer in 2017, has become its public defender. The Italian points to Tether’s collaborations with police and other authorities around the world to take down scams.

“If the US wanted to kill us, they can press a button and kill us anywhere,” he told Coindesk in October, just before the US election. “We are not going to fight the US.”

Richard Teng

Age: 54

title: chief executive of Binance

career: Regulator at Abu Dhabi Global Market, chief regulatory officer at SGX Singapore exchange

Richard Teng was tasked with cleaning up Binance after the world’s largest crypto exchange was fined a record $4.3bn last year and pleaded guilty to US criminal charges related to money laundering and breaching international sanctions.

The Singaporean took over from founder Changpeng Zhao, who spent four months in prison after pleading guilty to a US criminal charge of failure to prevent money laundering and taking a $50mn penalty. But Binance’s battle to draw a line under its past is still not over: it is fighting 13 charges from the SEC, including accusations of market manipulation.

Teng, a former regulator in Abu Dhabi and executive at the Singapore stock exchange, cuts a more cautious public figure than his ebullient predecessor. Nevertheless, he is hopeful that Trump’s victory might open up the US market to Binance.

Trump “has injected optimism into the market”, he said recently, adding: “With talks of a US strategic bitcoin reserve and more companies adding bitcoin to their corporate treasuries, we are on the precipice of true mainstream global adoption.”

Vitalik Buterin

Age: 30

title: co-founder of Ethereum

career: Dropped out of University after winning thiel fellowship grant, Founded Bitcoin Magazine

Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, has been swimming against the tide of his fellow crypto magnates. His crypto holdings have reportedly made the Canadian a paper billionaire, but Buterin’s business activities are notably less commercial and are focused on building up the Ethereum crypto ecosystem via a non-profit foundation. 

While other crypto leaders were endorsing Trump this summer, Buterin posted a 2,400-word blog post criticising those who support candidates just because they are “pro-crypto”.

“Making decisions in this way carries a high risk of going against the values that brought you into the crypto space in the first place,” he wrote. 

Buterin, who founded Ethereum in 2013 aged 19, wrote that crypto was born from “the cypherpunk movement” and the values of individual freedom and internationalism. Alongside a picture of himself sitting near Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018, the Russian-born programmer warned that crypto can also appeal to “authoritarians”.

Without mentioning Trump by name, Buterin criticised tariffs and tighter immigration rules — two of the president-elect’s main policies. He also criticised crypto investors who would support “a power-seeking narcissist” just because that candidate will “make sure it’s easy for you to trade coins”. 

Brad Garlinghouse

Age: 53

TITLE: chief executive of Ripple labs

career: executive at yahoo!, senior adviser at silver lake partners. joined ripple in 2015.

The Harvard Business School graduate became an industry hero after his company Ripple Labs won a partial victory in court last year, when a judge ruled that it did not violate securities law by selling digital tokens to members of the public. 

Garlinghouse was a prominent contributor to the Fairshake PAC, telling CBS’s 60 Minutes last week that Fairshake was a reaction to what he saw as an SEC “war on crypto”. Since the election, the token associated with his company, XRP, has soared in value to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency. 

Garlinghouse has continued to push the industry’s case, wearing a “Fuck the SEC” T-shirt at a conference organised by Cantor last month. He says he wants clear rules from the US. “We haven’t been asking to be deregulated. We’ve been asking to be regulated,” he told 60 Minutes. 

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz

Ages: 53 and 58

TITLE: co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz

career: Andreessen co-founded Netscape. horowitz worked at Netscape. together they co-founded opsware.

The decisions by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz to throw their support behind Trump in July shocked Silicon Valley. Their combined $5mn donations to political action committees supporting the Republican reversed years of support for Democratic candidates.

The billionaire duo run Andreessen Horowitz, the US’s largest venture capital fund for crypto companies and technology. Andreessen has been a particularly outspoken critic of the Biden administration’s policies, telling his own podcast show last month that the climate for crypto and technology under the Biden administration felt like a “repression”. Trump’s victory “felt like a boot off the throat . . . Every morning I wake up happier than the day before.”

They also donated $12.5mn each to Fairshake. Horowitz later switched support to Trump’s rival Kamala Harris, but Andreessen doubled down on his backing of Trump.

On their podcast after the election both concluded that they would stay politically active. “This has to be a permanent role that we play. We have to stay present . . . we have to fight and advocate for the things we believe in.”

Additional reporting by Joshua Oliver