Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaking to an audience at the Bitcoin2024 event on July 26, praised the role Bitcoin will play in improving the U.S. economy and the American way of life, and promised to sign several executive orders to start that process on his first day in office.
Bitcoinization by Presidential Decree
Kennedy said he would sign an order directing the Department of Justice and U.S. Marshals to transfer 204,000 Bitcoin held by the U.S. to the Federal Reserve Banks to be kept as a “strategic asset.” Additionally, Kennedy said he would order the Treasury Department to purchase 500 Bitcoin (BTC) every day until the reserve reaches at least 4 million BTC.
He promised that the US would gain “a lucrative position that no other country can take away” and that Bitcoin reserves would eventually reach a value of “hundreds of trillions of dollars.”
Additionally, Kennedy would order all transactions between Bitcoin and dollars to be exempt from reporting and taxation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and would order the IRS to treat Bitcoin as an exchange for real estate under the 1031 exchange program, which incentivizes real estate investment.
Related: “Vote, but don’t join the cult” — Edward Snowden speaks at Bitcoin 2024
Bitcoin’s benefits go beyond just the economy
“Freedom of Trade [is] “This is as important as the First Amendment’s freedom of speech,” Kennedy said, noting that Bitcoin could provide that freedom and help restore the U.S. economy to where it was before President Richard Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard to finance the Vietnam War.
“Fiat money was invented to finance wars. […] If the world followed the BTC standard, there would be no wars because Bitcoin could not be printed.”
Kennedy was planning to hire Space Force commander Major Jason Lowry as his national security adviser. I have written The MIT professor described Bitcoin as a “cyber defense system” and a “projection of soft power” that protects online identities in cyberspace.
Kennedy would back U.S. short-term Treasury bills and bonds with real assets like precious metals and Bitcoin to strengthen the dollar, tame inflation and usher in a new era of financial stability. Then, he said, “the world would rush to support a U.S.-backed decentralized currency.”
Magazine: Hyperbitcoinization is underway, RFK asks for Bitcoin donations, more news: Hodler Digest, May 14-20
