Trump's crypto flip-flop came after he 'fell in love' with tokens of himself: report

Former President Donald Trump didn't always love cryptocurrency, but he does now. And the reason, wrote Olga Kharif, Stephanie Lai, David Pan, and Teresa Xie for Bloomberg News, dates back to the moment he realized that a certain type of cryptocurrency could have his picture on it.

This comes after Trump spoke at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where he pledged to fire Securities and Exchange Commissioner Gary Gensler for not doing the wishes of the crypto industry and proclaiming: "I pledge to the Bitcoin community that the day I take the oath of office, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris's anti-crypto crusade, it will end. If Bitcoin is going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way."

Even some crypto fans were reportedly revolted by the rambling speech.

It's a sharp turn from when Trump was actually in office, and considered crypto to be "a scam against the dollar." And there's a key reason for that, said the report, that goes beyond simply how much money crypto enthusiast millionaires have given to his campaign.

Read also: 'I fell asleep listening to him': Trump Bitcoin speech attendees say he was 'embarrassing'

Specifically, the key factor that made Trump love crypto, said the report, is "flattering images of himself."

"Simply put, he fell in love with Trump-themed nonfungible-tokens — and the supporters who bought them — and that passion has turned into a broader appreciation for the industry, according to insiders who have watched Trump's crypto evolution. Trump’s lingering questions about valuations of digital assets haven’t slowed his NFT sales pitch, which was clear in May as he riffed off-script to a Mar-a-Lago gathering of supporters who had purchased at least 47 of the digital trading cards — pop-art renderings of the former president, including images of him dressed up like a cowboy, a superhero and other figures of fantasy."

When Trump first got into merchandising NFTs of himself in 2022, even some of his own aides thought it was a stupid idea. But it is in line with Trump's lifetime habit of slapping his own name on his properties and businesses at every available opportunity, and even a number of properties he doesn't actually own.

Cryptocurrency developed as a proposed replacement for traditional money that would make transactions faster, more secure, and the money supply less subject generally to the policy of banks and governments. In practice, the application for crypto as actual money remains limited, but it has taken off as an investment product, akin to stocks and bonds. And with it has come controversies over how it skirts regulatory rules and has become an energy hog.