Tech
Mark Cuban Thinks He Knows Why Tech Billionaires Are Flocking to Trump
As a group of ultra-wealthy investors and tech executives flock to Donald Trump’s corner promising financial support for his presidential campaign, Cuban Mark has a theory about why Silicon Valley is suddenly excited about the GOP nominee.
The billionaire investor believes VCs are backing Trump as part of a ploy to deregulate cryptocurrencies and drive up the price of Bitcoin.
On Wednesday, Cuban published on X: “Here’s a counter-opinion on the emergence of Silicon Valley support for former President Trump. Which like all my opinions here, probably won’t be popular.
Many of the tech moguls pledging financial support for Trump actually believe in cryptocurrencies. They also have a financial interest in seeing the industry thrive: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of the eponymous VC firm, Elon Musk, Cameron, and Tyler Winkelvoss are all cryptocurrency enthusiasts with axes to grind against Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has led the agency’s regulatory assault on the industry. They’ve all promised to contribute millions to pro-Trump political action committees in the wake of the latest attempted murder weekend on the former president.
Andreessen Horowitz raised a $4.5 billion crypto fund in 2022which he used to finance a dense portfolio of startupsThe Winkelvoss twins own the crypto exchange Gemini, which has battled regulators like the SEC and the New York attorney general, in the end paying more $70 million fines related to a fraudulent crypto lending scheme. Musk has promoted a number of crypto projects and He is said to have advised Trump on digital currencies as early as May.
Cuban suggested that Trump’s proposed economic policies would benefit Bitcoin. The inevitable corporate tax cuts and proposed import tariffs will drive up the price of Bitcoin, the investor argued. “What will drive up the price of BTC are lower tax rates and tariffs, which if history is any guide (and it isn’t always), will be inflationary.”
Cuban tells Inc. he was just making a guess, rather than speaking with absolute certainty. “That was just my guess,” he wrote in an email. “I don’t have any details. It just made too much sense to me given the mega BTC on the list” of Trump donors, he said, using shorthand for Bitcoin Maximalists, who evangelize the cryptocurrency and believe it will eventually replace traditional currency.
To be sure, Bitcoin’s five-day average price has risen to $63,815, or nearly eight percent, since Sunday, the day after Musk and the hedge fund magnate Bill Ackman endorsed TrumpBut the wave began long before the wave of technical support for the candidate: Bitcoin is up 114 percent over the past year, spurred in large part by the SEC’s approval of spot ETFs, which opened trading markets to a broader consumer audience.
There are, of course, other reasons why tech luminaries are interested in funding a deregulation agenda, and many of them are unrelated to cryptocurrency. Musk has become the industry’s self-proclaimed crusader against progressive or “woke” politics, and he likely sees Trump as a figure who could bend not only the regulatory landscape, but perhaps the cultural climate, to his will. In an essay late last year, Marc Andreessen has announced his opposition to anything related to “statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism,” which one suspects would be shared by a Republican administration.