Donald Trump has changed his tune on Bitcoin (BTC).
The former president and presumptive Republican nominee in 2024 fielded a question about the top crypto asset during a Fox News town hall in South Carolina this week.
Trump says he prefers the US dollar but acknowledges that Bitcoin has taken on “a life of its own.”
“You probably have to do some regulation as you know, but many people are embracing it and more and more I’m seeing people wanting to pay [in] Bitcoin, and you’re seeing something that’s interesting. So I can live with it one way or the other. I’ve always liked one really powerful thing, and that’s called the dollar.”
The former president has previously expressed hostility towards the crypto sector. In May 2018, while serving in the Oval Office, he reportedly directed then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “go after Bitcoin [for fraud].”
Three years later, Trump said in an interview that he owned zero cryptocurrencies, arguing that digital assets were “a disaster waiting to happen.”
There have been some hints that the former president has been warming up to digital assets, however.
In December 2022, he launched collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum (ETH)-based platform OpenSea, weeks after formally announcing his intention to run for the 2024 presidential election.
A financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics last year indicated Trump owned a cryptocurrency wallet with holdings valued somewhere between $250,001 and $500,000.
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