For Brandon Mintz, it was the text messages and calls that started rolling in from friends and colleagues asking how high bitcoin prices could go.
For Lee Bratcher, it was the surge in ticket sales for his annual North American Blockchain Summit.
They were signs, the two bitcoin industry executives said, that the next era of cryptocurrency could soon be dawning.
President-elect Donald Trump’s win on the heels of his campaign’s embrace of cryptocurrency technology, along with Senate and House victories by a Republican Party seen as friendlier to crypto interests, have sparked a fresh wave of optimism in the crypto world. It’s a sharp turn in sentiment for an industry that, 24 months ago, was reeling from a precipitous crash in prices, multibillion-dollar scandals and deep questions about the use cases for blockchain technology.
The newfound optimism has for some approached euphoria, according to executives and experts in the space.
“It’s exuberant,” Bratcher, the head of the nonprofit Texas Blockchain Council, told NBC News. He said his summit, taking place later this month in Dallas, has now sold out — a development he said he was not expecting prior to the election.
“The industry recognizes significant changes are going to be coming,” he said.
The energy has been apparent to anyone watching the price of bitcoin. The most popular cryptocurrency shot well above previous all-time highs after Trump’s win became clear, briefly topping $93,000 — a roughly 33% increase in the span of just one week.
As of Friday afteroon, it was trading right around $90,000, still well above its previous peak levels.
The bull run is predicated on a range of proposed reforms that advocates say will unleash even more demand for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — while ultimately, in Trump’s words, making the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet.”
For some skeptics, though, a rapid embrace of all things crypto without regulatory safeguards is fueling concerns of even more rampant scams. In 2023, the FBI received approximately 70,000 complaints of crypto scams costing people $5.6 billion.
There is hope in the industry that bringing more of it into a defined legal framework and onto U.S. shores will ultimately reduce the number of victims.
‘Career risk’ diminished
Mintz, who runs Bitcoin Depot, a bitcoin ATM company, said he expects federal officials to move from a policy of regulation via enforcement and penalization to a more laissez-faire approach.
“We believe the regulatory environment will change to spur more innovation, not just for crypto firms but all holders of bitcoin,” Mintz said.
The hope is that, as Trump-appointed regulators provide clearer guidelines for large banks and other traditional financial entities, mainstream interest in bitcoin investment will flourish.
Bratcher said the current lack of clarity about bitcoin-investment rules, based on overlapping rulings from agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has created “career risk” for money managers who may have desired to own bitcoin for their clients but who were afraid of personal or professional sanction.
Some of that risk dissipated with the approval earlier this year of bitcoin exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, which allow investors to benefit from bitcoin’s price appreciation.
But with the new administration, Bratcher said, investors can expect the regulations “they’ve been asking for” — and with it, the ability for everyone from the uberrich to 401(k) holders to benefit from what he said would be bitcoin’s inevitable long-term price gains.
‘Get off zero’
To get a sense of the potential investment volume that could be incoming from such changes, one can look at the current value of holdings of existing bitcoin ETFs, which are now worth nearly $100 billion, according to one estimate.
For Ric Edelman, head of Edelman Financial Services, a group that provides training and instruction about investing in bitcoin to traditional finance professionals, even simply moving an investor’s funds allocation from no bitcoin to 1% would represent a sea change.
He said groups like pension boards will ultimately have a fiduciary duty to invest in bitcoin if there is a risk of missing out on massive run-ups in price like the one that has occurred this month.
“The mantra is: ‘Get off zero,” Edelman said. “You can argue whether it should be 1% or 3% or 10%. But you’re having an increasingly difficult time justifying ‘zero.’”
Looser, if more defined, cryptocurrency regulations are also likely to mean a proliferation of alternative cryptocurrencies, said JP Richardson, CEO of Exodus, a cryptocurrency wallet firm. It’s something that has already been occurring in anticipation of a Trump victory — and Trump himself has sought to cash in.
In the weeks preceding the election, Trump announced the launch of an online token called World Liberty Financial. Though it has provided official regulatory filings, they state that “World Liberty” is not a security and that, for now, the tokens are not actually available to U.S. persons.
The risks inherent to cryptocurrencies have not gone away as prices have surged. If anything, the risks will likely be exacerbated, at least in the short term: Nicholas Percoco, chief security officer at Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange, said there tends to be a direct correlation between price gains in bitcoin and the aggressiveness with which bad actors attempt to target victims.
“They might try more things, or are more motivated in their campaigns,” Percoco said. “Instead of 10,000 people, they might try something that targets 100,000 people — it’s just a matter of increasing the percentage of victims.”
Meanwhile, a single act long advocated for in the furthest corners of the crypto universe, but which this year gained more popular momentum, could prove even more consequential for bitcoin than any single regulatory reform.
Strategic reserve could set off ‘bitcoin space race’
Under this idea, the U.S. would establish a “strategic bitcoin reserve,” like the ones it already maintains for gold and oil.
The concept gained traction this summer at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — now a Trump transition adviser and his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — made headlines when he suggested the U.S. should purchase 4 million bitcoin. At earlier summer prices, that would have cost about $274 billion, or more than double all U.S. spending on Social Security.
A day later, Trump echoed the strategic reserve idea, though did not put a specific figure on it.
The strategic reserve effort is currently being led by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., a crypto proponent who has sponsored a bill that would create the government bitcoin fund. Her proposal would see the U.S. buy 1 million bitcoin over a period of years. On Nov. 6, Lummis posted on X in all-caps, “WE ARE GOING TO BUILD A STRATEGIC BITCOIN RESERVE,” alongside two American flags.
For crypto supporters, a strategic bitcoin reserve would send a signal to markets and countries alike about the digital token’s value.
David Bailey, CEO of BTC Inc., which runs the Bitcoin Conference and Bitcoin Magazine, told NBC News that the creation of the strategic reserve could set off a bitcoin “space race” among nations looking to follow the U.S.’s example, something that would have profound implications for bitcoin’s value.
Even before the election, bitcoin’s tendency to move in cycles already augured a price surge that would usher in a new “bitcoin summer” following an extended period below the all-time highs seen during the FTX craze before that exchange’s collapse two years ago, said Michael Terpin, an author and crypto entrepreneur, said in an interview.
“We knew it would happen faster if Trump won,” Terpin said, referring to bitcoin hitting a fresh all-time high. “He’s the first president to openly support [bitcoin]. He’s made it a lot more vibrant, and powerful.”