Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed a platform based partly on “economic independence” in his 2024 presidential campaign, specifically taking a stance on digital currencies.
Speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire on July 31, DeSantis reiterated his plans of banning central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, should he win the Republican nomination and presidential race and take office in 2025. The Florida governor added he planned to end U.S. President Joe Biden’s “war on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency” should he win the presidency.
It’s unclear to which specific policies DeSantis was referring, but he suggested they were coming through the Federal Reserve. President Biden signed an executive order establishing plans for a regulatory framework for digital currencies in March 2022. The Securities and Exchange Commission has also filed several lawsuits against crypto firms while Biden has been in office, and the Department of Justice has overseen criminal charges for former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky.
DeSantis went on to compare the United States government’s plans for a CBDC to those in China, where the central bank is currently conducting trials of a digital yuan. He claimed that “unaccountable elites” in the government could not be trusted to handle the potential rollout of a digital dollar.
“[The Fed wants] to go to a cashless society. They want to eliminate cryptocurrency,” claimed DeSantis. “As president, on day one, CBDC goes into the trash can — we’re not going to allow it.”
New Hampshire is widely considered a suitable testing ground for U.S. presidential candidates due to the state holding the first primary in the national race. DeSantis has had a rocky start to his official campaign since announcing it on Twitter — now X — in May but is still considered the second most viable Republican candidate, according to several different polls.
Nearly all polls show DeSantis trailing well behind twice-impeached former president and federally indicted candidate Donald Trump. Both candidates are expected to face elections in state primaries starting in January, leading to a final vote to determine the party candidate at the Republican National Convention in July 2024.
Both Democratic and Republican candidates vying for a place in the 2024 presidential election have voiced opinions on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and CBDCs. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democratic party candidate polling roughly 40-50 points behind Biden, has made several pro-crypto statements in his campaign and revealed several BTC purchases. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who accepted a BTC salary for his position and helped launch the “MiamiCoin” project, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in June.
Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino explained that if the hacking group was telling the truth, they would have asked for a ransom, but he “couldn’t find any request.”
The symbolism of Labour taking the West Midlands mayor, a jewel in the Tory crown, could be felt in the room as Labour activists gathered in Birmingham to celebrate the win with their new mayor Richard Parker and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
There are moments on election journeys when the momentum shifts – and this win felt like one of them.
“We humbly asked [the voters] to put their trust and confidence in a changed Labour Party and they did. And that is a significant piece of political history that we’ve made here today,” said Sir Keir at his victory rally.
“So the message out of these elections, the last now the last stop before we go into that general election, is that the country wants change.
“I hope the prime minister is listening and gives the opportunity to the country to vote as a whole in a general election as soon as possible.”
This win gave them the boost that was missing when they won the Blackpool South by-election on a massive 26-point swing, but then failed to pick up the hundreds of council seats they were chasing.
More on Conservatives
Related Topics:
This win, on just 1,508 votes or 0.25 per cent of the vote, was a body blow for a Conservative party that believed they could just about cling on. Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, is now the last Tory standing.
For Labour, then a moment to bookmark.
Advertisement
Just as Boris Johnson’s Hartlepool by-election win in 2021 was a low point for Sir Keir – he told me this week that he considered resigning over the loss because he thought it showed he was the barrier to Labour’s recovery – this too will feel devastating not just for Andy Street but for the PM too.
Labour has beaten him in a street fight. He’s bloodied with Sir Keir now emboldened.
“This was the one result we really needed,” said one senior Labour figure. “It’s been our top focus for the past week and symbolically a very important win.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:32
Analysis of local election and mayoral results
And Labour needed the boost, because, as Professor Michael Thrasher pointed out in his Sky News’ national vote share projection calculated from the local election results, Sir Keir was not picking up the sort of vote share that Tony Blair was winning in the run-up to the 1997 Labour landslide.
His latest calculation of a 35% vote share for Labour and 26% for the Tories, put Sir Keir winning a general election but short of a majority.
What the West Midlands mayoral win did for Sir Keir was to give him a clear narrative that he is coming for the Tories and will do what he needs to take them down.
It raises inevitable questions about what is next for Rishi Sunak. The prime minister had nowhere to go today, not one win to celebrate. The worst performance in council elections in 40 years, was already pretty much as bad as it gets before the loss of Andy Street. The former Conservative mayor was magnanimous towards the prime minister, saying the loss was his alone.
But colleagues will not be so generous. One former cabinet minister said this loss was “devastating”. “We’re done and there’s no appetite to move against him,” said the senior MP. Many Tories tell me they are now resigned to defeat and believe Mr Sunak and his team needed to own it, rather than the rest of the party.
The coming days might be bumpy, the mood will be stony. But Tories tell me not much will actually change for them.
For Sir Keir, he now needs to sell not the changed Labour Party, but his vision for changing the country. The West Mids mayor’s win was dazzling, but it could have so easily gone the other way. And as Mr Sunak fights to survive, Labour still has to fight hard to win.