Former Republican representative warns that Trump’s crypto ventures are opening up an avenue for unprecedented corruption in U.S. politics.
Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance has reignited excitement in the digital asset market, sparking investor optimism about crypto finally entering the mainstream. But not everyone is enthusiastic about how the new administration is handling regulation.
Among the critics is Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, Air Force veteran, and outspoken Trump opponent. In a recent interview with investment platform Saxo, which accepted questions from crypto.news, Kinzinger raised concerns over how crypto could be misused for political corruption, particularly under President Trump.
Below is the Q&A portion of the interview.
crypto.news: There has been an increasing legislative push for comprehensive and crypto-friendly regulation. Do you think these efforts are going in a positive direction, and what are the key areas legislators should be focusing on? Trump’s WLFI has attracted concerns, especially among Democratic legislators, for potential conflicts of interest. You have been a vocal critic of Trump. What is your view on these criticisms? With President Trump involved in the crypto industry directly, is there a risk that legislators may be under pressure to pass legislation that favors Trump’s businesses? What can they do to make sure that legislation protects investors while also being fair to all industry players?
Adam Kinzinger: If you think about how crypto started, it was a way to make payments that weren’t trackable. Now it’s a legitimate currency, especially when you look at Bitcoin, that has a role, but for the most part, crypto is not being used for very much in terms of actual purchases or sales or anything like that. It’s become a commodity with no real value. And that’s the interesting thing is – what is the value people are willing to pay for it.
I do think Bitcoin has some inherent value behind it. It has seemed to hold its level. But when you start with memecoins, what you end up doing is saying, “Look, I’m going to start an Adam Kinzinger memecoin and see if anybody out there wants to put money on it and I’ll profit from it.” I mean, we saw the Hawk Tuah girl do it. We see Donald Trump do it.
In a free market economy, people can do whatever they want. If you want to put your money into a memecoin -great. I don’t think it’s a great investment, personally, but if you want to play and ride that until the ship drops, you can do that. The concern I have with crypto is the level of corruption that can come with it. And this is why I think there’s got to be a middle ground between transparency in crypto, but also understanding that it has a unique role.
When Donald Trump, for instance, has a Chinese crypto investor who basically invests eight figures into a Trump cryptocurrency and then a week later, the Securities and Exchange Commission drops a case against him having to do with crypto scamming, that’s a huge problem, and this is my concern.
My other concern with crypto is not what it means between Joe Blow over here and Joe Public over here and their interactions with each other. What I am concerned about is when it is used as a conveyance for corruption. There is nothing that will destroy the trust in a democracy more than corruption.
I honestly think that when this administration is over, we’re going to be stunned at the level of corruption there was in this administration. And I think crypto will have played a role in that because they’ve recognised how to hide some of this. Why is it that Trump Jr. is involved in apparently every crypto investment? Eventually, you have to start asking questions.
So what I would like to see the government do is, in a perfect world, to actually have some version of oversight while maintaining the original purpose of crypto, but having a way to defend against particularly public service corruption, because I think that’s the thing that can destroy countries more than anything.
