Trump returning to Minnesota with Vance to swing Democrat-leaning state | AP News

It makes sense that Trump was a cryptocurrency sceptic. He made (and lost) money in real estate, where you own somethng tangible, and was justifiably skeptical about how bits in a blockchain could have any value. But there are two reasons why Trump has done a 180:

• There are a handful of people who ran the right software in 2010 on a whim, netting 50 BTC every time they hit a block, which wasn't even worth $1 when they mined it but is now worth over 3 Million. And blocks were (and are) found every 10 minutes or so. These people are sitting on billions of dollars in unrealized gains, and will funnel it to the candidate that will give it the best tax treatment (ideally zero) when they sell. And Trump is always willing to listen to people willing to give him money.
• Crypto is useful to transfer money without any intermediary, so if Trump wants to accept funds of questionable legality from foreign sources, crypto can enable that. Simply using crypto for it doesn't make it any less illegal, but can make it harder for authorities to discover, which is what Trump is all about. He doesn't care about the law or ethics, but only what he can get away with.

I know I'll probably get downvoted but so what.

Bitcoin itself (and Ethereum) have become so valuable that they are considered investments, in a way that Beanie Babies and Cabbage Patch dolls only dreamed of.

They are currencies and are used that way but are also traded and invested just as millions of people do with Forex.

The blockchain records and validates every transaction so it is traceable. Your anonymity comes down to what kind of wallet you're using.

Many smaller cryptos are definitely "pump and dump" scams. If you get in at the bottom of the wave, you can make money.

If you want anonymity, Monero (XMR) is the crypto you want. This is what the currency of "the dark web" is.

Once I saw that the organizers of this conference invited T**** to speak, I got rid off all my BTC. It's not enough to affect the price but I don't want to be associated with it anymore.

As someone else mentioned, these cryptobros are supporting Cheeto Dick Don out of greed.

He's interested in it bc he thinks he'll get away with receiving illegal contributions. The FEC and IRS will be able to track those payments if they ever decide to get involved.

Anything to give dolphin porn seeking, monkey ball burning, cat-hating, couch-fucking, preferred moniker douchenozzle creep, Vance, more exposure, works for me!

Let him waste his time and money. It's a good strategy to ignore all the other swings and already decided.

we've been weakening in that regard over the last decade

That's the thing, we really haven't. 2016 got a lot of press because Trump lost by the narrowest margin since Bush vs Gore, but if you look at the actual vote totals, Trump didn't do any better than the last 4 Republicans, slightly worse than Romney and Bush in 2004, in fact. The only reason it was as close as it was was due to the terrible turnout by Dems for Hillary in 2016. 2020 results were back in line with the norm, with Biden winning by 7+ points. So don't believe the media's click bait hype, Minnesota is not and never was in play. (Of course, that doesn't mean you don't need to vote, and don't forget the down ballot races, which are arguably more important. And have you voted in your primary yet? Early voting is open, election day is August 13th)