Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised the role Bitcoin could play in improving the US economy and the American way of life as he spoke to an audience at the Bitcoin 2024 conferenc on July 26. He promised to sign a number of executive orders on his first day in office to begin the process.
Bitcoinization by executive order
Kennedy would sign an order requiring the US Justice Department and US Marshalls to transfer the 204,000 Bitcoin (BTC) held by the US to the Federal Reserve to be held as a “strategic asset,” he said. Furthermore, Kennedy said he would also order the Treasury Department to purchase 500 Bitcoin daily until the reserve reaches at least four million BTC.
The United States would attain “a position of dominance no other country will be able to usurp” and its Bitcoin reserve would eventually reach a value of “hundreds of trillions of dollars,” he promised.
In addition, Kennedy would order the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to treat all transactions between Bitcoin and the US dollar as nonreportable and nontaxable. He would also order the IRS to treat Bitcoin as eligible for exchange into real property under the 1031 Exchange program, which provides incentives for real estate investment.
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Bitcoin advantages go beyond the economy
“Transactional freedom [is] as important as freedom of expression in the 1st Amendment,” Kennedy said, and Bitcoin can provide that freedom and help restore the United States economy to its condition before President Richard Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard to fund the Vietnam war. Kennedy added:
“Fiat currency was invented to fund war. […] If the world was on a BTC standard, there would be no more war because you can’t print Bitcoin.”
Kennedy would hire Space Force Major Jason Lowery as a national security adviser. Lowery is known for the thesis he wrote at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that described Bitcoin as a “cyber-defense system” and “soft power projection” that would the online identities in cyberspace.
Kennedy would back US Treasury bills, notes and bonds with hard assets, including precious metals and Bitcoin, to strengthen the dollar, rein in inflation and usher in a new era of financial stability. Then, “the world will rush to back an American-backed decentralized currency,” he said.