At Bitcoin 2024 today, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threw out some pretty radical ideas about how he plans to integrate Bitcoin into the U.S. economy if he wins the election.
The big plan? Start scooping up Bitcoin daily and use it to strengthen the U.S. financial system.
Kennedy got this idea to transfer the 204,000 Bitcoin that the Justice Department and U.S. Marshalls have stashed away to the Federal Reserve.
He calls Bitcoin a “strategic asset,” which he thinks can give the U.S. a big leg up on the global stage. He wants the Treasury Department to buy 500 Bitcoin every day until the reserve hits 4 million BTC.
He claims this move will put the U.S. in a dominant position, with the Bitcoin stash potentially worth “hundreds of trillions of dollars.”
Shaking up taxes and financial rules with Bitcoin
Kennedy also said he wants to make all Bitcoin-to-dollar transactions nonreportable and nontaxable, which means the IRS wouldn’t get involved. This, he says, would give people “transactional freedom,” kind of like the freedom of speech.
He added that he wants to make Bitcoin eligible for exchange into real property under the 1031 Exchange program, which currently gives tax breaks for real estate deals.
By including Bitcoin, he’s hoping to kickstart some economic growth and innovation. Kennedy’s basically saying that Bitcoin can help bring the U.S. economy back to the good old days before Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in the ’70s.
Kennedy called America’s fiat currency a tool for funding wars. He even went as far as to say that a Bitcoin standard could potentially prevent conflicts since you can’t just print Bitcoin to fund a war.
The presidential candidate’s Bitcoin plans also dip into national security. He’s talking about bringing in Space Force Major Jason Lowery as a national security adviser.
Lowery’s known for some pretty unconventional ideas himself, like seeing Bitcoin as a “cyber-defense system” and a way to project “soft power” in the world.
