Donald Trump picks Bitcoiner JD Vance for running mate at RNC
During Monday’s Republican National Convention, Donald Trump announced his vice president running mate, JD Vance. After ‘lengthy deliberation and thought,’ the Republican senator and bitcoin investor beat a large number of contenders including Greg Abbott, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Elise Stefanik, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vance won his 2022 Ohio state primary on a pro-crypto platform and has maintained a pro-crypto stance for years.
He has also owned and supported Bitcoin while opposing heightened surveillance and tax reporting requirements from crypto companies. Specifically, he disclosed owning between $100,001-250,000 worth of bitcoin on Coinbase during the 2022 calendar year.
Moreover, Politico recently reported that he was working on a crypto legislative overhaul similar to the House of Representatives’ FIT21 bill.
While Vance has been supportive of Bitcoin, he’s been equally critical of the Gary Gensler-led US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and as senator he voted to repeal SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) 121. The controversial bulletin introduced guidance from the SEC that crypto companies — including, presumably, crypto custodians like banks — should add a liability to their balance sheet when custodying crypto assets.
Read more: Crypto community split on FIT21 bill — is it good or bad news?
Does JD Vance own crypto besides bitcoin?
Some members of the crypto community speculate that Vance owns other digital assets. For example, an Ethereum wallet named jdvance.eth owns approximately 3.8 ETH and owned a peak 17 ETH in 2021. However, it’s unclear whether Vance actually owns that wallet.
If he does, it would seemingly contradict his 2022 disclosure form that listed his only crypto assets as bitcoin.
Suspiciously, many NFT and meme coin promoters have posted promotional messages about the wallet, claiming not only that Vance controls it but also that because the wallet possesses an asset he likely purchased that asset.
Of course, anyone can send a token to a wallet, akin to how donors have gifted Ethereum leader Vitalik Buterin assorted altcoins in an attempt to promote their projects.
Protos was unable to verify that Vance owns any crypto assets outside his 2022 bitcoin-only disclosure and no major media outlet has reported that he owns any altcoins.
To be clear, Vance has never claimed to be Bitcoin-only and has spoken very positively about utility tokens and non-bitcoin uses of blockchain technologies.
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