Key Takeaways
- Trump shared a video from 2018 featuring Peter Van Valkenburgh of CoinCenter, calling it the “greatest Bitcoin explanation of all time.”
- In the video, Van Valkenburgh praises Bitcoin as a decentralized and borderless monetary system, comparable in societal impact to the internet.
- While Van Valkenburgh acknowledged Bitcoin’s limitations, he argued the fact it functions without trusted intermediaries was a “computer science breakthrough”
Donald Trump is once again receiving praise from the crypto community after sharing what he called the “greatest Bitcoin explanation of all time.”
In a video posted on Truth Social, Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of CoinCenter, delivers a compelling testimony for Bitcoin before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee in 2018.
The post follows Trump’s signing of the GENIUS Act on Friday, which he described as potentially “the greatest revolution in financial technology since the birth of the internet itself.”
Trump Shares Van Valkenburgh’s Case for Bitcoin
During his address in 2018, Van Valkenburgh articulated a visionary argument for the role of Bitcoin and blockchain technology in reshaping global finance.
Van Valkenburgh positioned Bitcoin as a public monetary utility, just as the internet serves as a public utility for information.
“What does Bitcoin do? It’s simple. It lets you send and receive value to and from anyone in the world using nothing more than a computer and an Internet connection.”
He contrasted this innovation with the pre-Bitcoin world, where sending money online required the involvement and trust of numerous private intermediaries such as banks and payment processors.
“With Bitcoin, the ledger is the public blockchain, and anyone can add an entry to that ledger, transferring their Bitcoins to someone else,” he explained.
“And anyone, regardless of their nationality, race, religion, gender, sex, or creditworthiness, can for absolutely no cost create a Bitcoin address in order to receive payments digitally.”
“Bitcoin is the world’s first globally accessible public money,” he added.
Bitcoin’s Limitations
Van Valkenburgh acknowledged Bitcoin’s shortcomings but emphasized its significance as a technological breakthrough:
“Is it perfect? No. Neither was email when it was invented in 1972,” he said. “Bitcoin’s not the best money on every margin. It’s not yet accepted everywhere. It’s not used often to quote prices, and it’s not always a stable store of value.”
“But it is working, and the mere fact that it works without trusted intermediaries is amazing. It’s a computer science breakthrough, and it will be as significant for freedom, prosperity, and human flourishing as the birth of the internet.”
He argued that reliance on centralized infrastructure, especially from increasingly powerful corporate entities, has left society vulnerable to systemic failures.
“Roughly half of all Americans, 143 million people, had their social security numbers exposed to hackers because of a breach at Equifax,” he pointed out.
“There shouldn’t be a single point of failure,” Van Valkenburgh concluded, adding that the issue lies not in whether the failure originates from a corporation or a government, but in the fact that such a point of failure exists at all.
The GENIUS Act
On Friday, President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, creating the first dedicated regulatory framework in the U.S. for stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of a fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar.
Speaking during a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Trump humorously suggested that the act was named after himself.
The bill had passed the House of Representatives a day earlier with bipartisan support: 308 votes in favor, including 206 Republicans and 102 Democrats.
“Just as I promised last year, the GENIUS Act creates a clear and simple regulatory framework to establish and unleash the immense promise of dollar-backed stablecoins,” Trump said.
“This could be, perhaps, the greatest revolution in financial technology since the birth of the Internet itself. A lot of people are saying that.”
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