I am on the record opposing the choice to court Trump and have routinely referred to this decision as an example of short-term thinking and one that will have negative long-term consequences for the Bitcoin community.

At that moment, Bitcoiners just needed to follow their own advice and zoom out. July 2024 was our last best chance to decentralize the political support for Bitcoin among both voters and politicians. Bitcoiners could have made the long-term play to force the political parties to compete for our support. Instead, Bitcoiners largely lined up to support the most polarizing political figure in generations.

"It is likely that Bitcoin will get caught in the crosshairs of the backlash against Trump, whenever that comes."

It is already more difficult for me to talk with friends, family and coworkers about Bitcoin because Donald Trump has been so closely tied to the technology since the 2024 campaign. To be fair, my friends, family and coworkers were not tripping over themselves to talk to me about Bitcoin before the election, but whenever I did get them to have a conversation, it was about Bitcoin; now the conversation is about Donald Trump. And it’s not just folks in my regular life: The same phenomenon is happening with elected officials and their staff. If you walk, like I have, into the office of any Democratic Senator or Representative to advocate for Bitcoin, you’ll spend most of your allotted time talking about Donald Trump’s ethics violations in the crypto space. Many Bitcoiners have reached out to me to share similar stories from their own experience.

The well-intentioned Christians who joined the Moral Majority in 1980 to support Ronald Reagan were making a calculated decision. I wonder what they would think about that movement morphing into what it has become today? Would those Evangelical Christians from 1980 recognize themselves in the president they voted for in 2024? We should be asking the same questions about the political alliance being formed with Donald Trump right now. What does the political landscape of Bitcoin look like 44 years from now?

"We should all learn from the mistakes and long-term costs of the Evangelical movement that courted Ronald Reagan. We must not allow Bitcoin to be a monolithic bloc. We must hold politicians accountable to say and do the best things for Bitcoin."