Such is the delight of the cryptocurrency world at Donald Trump's return as US president that even his former aide turned arch-critic Anthony Scaramucci found a few positive words to utter about his former boss at Davos.
Mr Scaramucci, who infamously lasted just 11 days as Mr Trump's White House director of communications in 2017, now runs an investment management company called Sky Bridge that focuses on cryptocurrencies. He told a panel at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday that Mr Trump's second administration would bring in “fair regulations” for the industry.
“It's going to unleash an amazing amount of global innovation, and you've got to give the president and his team credit for understanding it,” Mr Scaramucci said. “I am very hopeful and very pragmatically optimistic.”
It wasn't all praise for the president though: Mr Scaramucci reckons a memecoin called the Official Trump token, or $TRUMP – which was swiftly followed by a First Lady-themed variant called $MELANIA – might be bad publicity for newcomers to the crypto world. “You have older people in politics, older people in policymaking, that still do not understand the industry,” he said.
“I don't want them to meet the ideas behind the Trump memecoin and the potential negative things that are associated with the Trump memecoin. I just think it's going to slow down some people in the regulatory process.”
The price of Bitcoin hit an all-time peak of $109,241 ahead of Monday's inaugural ceremonies at the US Capitol. It later fell back after crypto failed to make an appearance in Mr Trump's first-day blitz of executive orders.
Crypto bosses at Davos called for clear regulations for the industry after what was seen as a mixed bag of policies under Joe Biden. Mr Trump told a Bitcoin conference last year that he wanted to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”.
“The Trump effect cannot be denied here,” said Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of crypto exchange Coinbase. “To have the leader of the largest-GDP country in the world come out undeniably and say that he wants to be the first crypto president, he wants the industry to be built in America, that he's going to direct every agency of the US government to work towards clear rules which enable innovation – this is unprecedented.
“We just yesterday saw an all-time high price for Bitcoin at $109,000. I think that's largely due to the inauguration.”
