Former White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, has expressed his views about the potential power of Bitcoin and blockchain, as a key part of a Global revolt.
Stephen Bannon, the popular former Chief Strategist for the Donald Trump administration, has said that for him, Bitcoin is key to a “global populist revolt”. He expressed this view on Friday the 2nd of August, during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, a morning business, politics news, and talk show.
BTC is a Part of the Revolt
Bannon, who is also the co-founder of a conservative news platform, Breitbart, accorded Bitcoin some esteem, saying:
“Cryptocurrencies have a big future. They could be a very important part going forward, particularly in this global populist revolt.”
This is not the first time Bannon has praised crypto and he is known to hold some Bitcoin himself.
Back in March, Bannon gave a lecture in Zurich, where he expressed a belief that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have more than enough potential to give institutions and even governments all over the world, enough individual power to resist unfavorable policies from the powers that be. According to him, these powers “debase your currency and make slave wages.”
Re-iterating this, Bannon believes that cryptocurrency is also a great way for entities that are somewhat reliant on big powers like the Dollar, to break free and pull in some level of dominance for themselves. He also suggested cryptocurrency, like Facebook’s Libra, has the potential to tackle traditional payment methods.
“I happen to think that Facebook was principally against some of the Chinese Alibaba, Tencent, etc. – these payment systems. I think that what people have to confront now, and people have started looking at is how the Chinese and third world countries – in Sub-Saharan Africa, in South Asia, and I think potentially in Latin America – are starting to put these payment systems in.
They are going to try to give them global dominance and be able to get off the reserve currency of the dollar.”
Anti-Trump?
Since he left his position as the White House Chief Strategist back in August 2017, Bannon’s views have somewhat aligned with that of his former boss. However, these recent statements have gone against the President’s opinion on cryptocurrency.
A few weeks ago, Trump joined crypto naysayers and regulatory supporters, deriding the cryptocurrency sector. At the time, the President said he is “not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.”
Luckily, the pronouncements against Bitcoin did little or nothing to the sector as it didn’t seem to lose significantly because of the criticism from Trump. In fact, many proponents were quick to point out that even though the comments were less than supportive, it was the first time the President would openly speak up about crypto, meaning that even with all the disapproval from many quarters, the sector is slowly becoming difficult to ignore.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, also corroborated this with a response saying:
next“Achievement unlocked! I dreamt about a sitting U.S. president needing to respond to growing cryptocurrency usage years ago.”