Why Kennedy Is Betting on Bitcoin

By Adam Garrie, Breaking News Reporter, The Kennedy Beacon

During his keynote speech at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 26, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained how using Bitcoin can revitalize the economy for all Americans saddled with debt and crippled by inflation.

Kennedy sees Bitcoin as both an epochal technological innovation and a ready-made solution to problems that have plagued American monetary policy makers since the Bretton-Woods era in the decades after World War II. In addition to freeing Americans to use Bitcoin, a virtual currency that anyone can buy, as a vital part of a new creative economic sector led by great entrepreneurs, Kennedy wants to use Bitcoin’s decentralized nature to transfer the power of monetary policy making from Washington, DC, to Main Street.

As a defender of individual liberty, Kennedy explained his view that Bitcoin’s lack of a central issuing authority or regulatory body has untapped advantages for the average American. Its value is a reflection of real-world macroeconomic trends rather than the whims of a central bank or influential executive body. As a result, the value of Bitcoin is a hedge against inflationary tactics of central banks that can eat into personal savings by instantly devaluing dollars in your pocket. 

Addressing a packed convention hall, Kennedy promised that on “day one” of his administration he would “sign an executive order directing the US Treasury to purchase 550 Bitcoin daily until the US has built a reserve of at least 4 million Bitcoins,” matching existing national gold reserves. 

Recalling President Nixon’s infamous decision to decouple the dollar from gold in 1971, Kennedy said that since that time “the dollar’s purchasing power has been in precipitous decline, eroding the savings and earnings of everyday Americans” as the Federal Reserve creates new currency backed by debt, perpetuating through inflation “the systematic robbery that has gutted the American middle class and decimated America’s working poor.”

Kennedy embraced the idea that Bitcoin can be used as an alternative to a dollarized economy run from the top down. He argued that it can strengthen community bonds by creating the ability to transact directly with fellow Americans.

Kennedy promised that, as president, he would ensure that all transactions transferring Bitcoin to the US dollar are 100% tax free. 

Kennedy also said he would “strengthen the US dollar and lower interest rates and neutralize our $34 trillion debt by backing US Treasury bills, notes, and bonds with hard assets, including a combination of precious metals and Bitcoin.” He added that “backing US debt obligations … reins in inflation, and ushers in a new era of American financial stability, peace, and prosperity.”

Kennedy continued, “This incorruptible currency will immediately start pulling wealth and assets from every other nation back into our country, restoring the strength of the dollar and repairing our balance of payments.”

Kennedy has been a fierce critic of the Federal Reserve’s policy of loaning cheaply to large, powerful corporations and private banks through the process of putting new dollars into circulation. This is often referred to as “quantitative easing” or “money printing” and is why, according to the candidate, young Americans are unable to afford homes and have been cheated from the American dream. “The hopelessness of the task of steadily growing their savings,” Kennedy said, 

“has pushed [young Americans] into a kind of financial nihilism and contributed to the epidemics of depression, suicide, and addiction among young Americans.” 

Finally, Kennedy said that “the discipline of tying our dollars to hard assets like Bitcoin will … also finally break our addiction to forever wars.” He explained:

Fiat currency was invented to fund wars.… Prior to the fiat currency innovation … if a government wanted to fund a war, it would issue war bonds and borrow the money from its citizens. Today governments don’t need to even ask permission.… I am a proponent of Bitcoin because it can defund the military-industrial complex that is bent not on national defense but on global domination.

Kennedy wants to make the US the Bitcoin capital of the world. 

He concluded by calling Bitcoin “the currency of freedom, of liberty, and hope. It restores self-sovereignty back to the individual, it gives us digital property rights for the first time, and it provides a store of value that will allow middle-class Americans to live in abundance.”