Former US president Donald Trump assisted as a keynote speaker at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference on Saturday. The Republican candidate’s speech has seemingly inspired industry figures and lawmakers worldwide to urge their jurisdictions to embrace a crypto-friendly stance and build a competitive industry.
Among these figures, Tron’s founder, Justin Sun, has called for China to “step up” and revise its regulatory approach to digital assets.
Justin Sun Urges For A Competitive Industry
On Sunday, Justin Sun addressed Trump’s Bitcoin 2024 Conference appearance. In his speech, former US President Donald Trump pledged to end the Biden administration’s “anti-crypto crusade” if elected president. Moreover, he promised to fire the Securities and Exchange Commission’s chairman, Gary Gensler, on his first day in office.
Trump criticized the US government’s crypto strategy, he stated, “For too long our government has violated the cardinal rule that every bitcoiner knows by heart: Never sell your bitcoin.”
The Republican candidate also emphasized he would keep “100% of all the bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires into the future.” If he wins the November elections, “The United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world,” Trump stated in Nashville.
Following the speech, Tron’s founder asked the Chinese government to “step up.” To him, China should “make further progress” in this area now that the Republican candidate has “pushed for Bitcoin” and US crypto policies have seemingly started to warm up.
Sun believes that if China revises its crypto regulations, it could lead to healthy competition between the countries that would benefit the whole sector: “Competition between China and the U.S. in Bitcoin policy will benefit the entire industry.”
Like Sun, Hong Kong’s lawmaker Johnny Ng addressed Trump’s speech and shared his perspective. To the lawmaker, Bitcoin and Web3 have gained global attention and have been used for technological and financial innovation.
Ng emphasized that Hong Kong is actively working to become a crypto hub and is at the forefront of “compliant regulation and industry development.”
However, he believes that Hong Kong should work on fostering “the technological developments of the industry” by further building “an ecosystem to attract globally competitive talent and capital, public chains and exchanges, enterprises, and projects, etc. to the city.”
Will China Change Its Crypto Stance?
After Sun’s post, community members agreed with his comments, stating that if China embraced BTC, “we could see incredible innovation and growth.” Others believe the industry could benefit from more countries joining a healthy competition.
However, many investors consider the country has “no incentives” to change its current regulatory stance. Additionally, some criticized US politician’s strategy of “being loud about it first.”
Over the years, the Chinese government has taken a firm stance against digital assets and mining, banning the latter and imposing strict regulations on digital assets. The regulatory authorities set these industry-hostile measures to curb the potential risks of cryptocurrencies and prevent financial crimes related to digital assets.
The drastic measures and ban led to an exodus of miners from the former crypto-mining hub. Since then, there’s been ongoing speculation about a change in China’s regulatory approach towards digital assets.
Most recently, Sun’s legal victory against a Chinese media group sparked the discussion on whether the country is softening its crypto approach.
