President Trump Praises Bitcoin Lecture: “The Greatest Explanation Ever”

President Donald Trump has expressed his interest in Bitcoin (BTC).

On the 20th (local time), President Trump posted a video on his Truth Social accompanied by the caption, “The greatest explanation of Bitcoin in history.”

The video contains the remarks made three years ago in a hearing by peter van valkenburgh, director of Coin Center.

Below is the full statement of van Valkenburgh:

What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the world’s first cryptocurrency and operates based on the world's first public blockchain network. What can Bitcoin do? It's simple. With just a computer and an internet connection, it allows anyone to send and receive value globally.

So, why is Bitcoin innovative? The reason is clear. Unlike any other means of transferring money over the Internet, Bitcoin does not require trusting an intermediary. Because there are no companies involved in the middle, Bitcoin has become the world's first public digital payment infrastructure. Here, “public” means that it is open to everyone and is not owned by any single entity.

We already have public infrastructure for information, websites, and email—that is, the Internet. However, the only public payment infrastructure we have is cash, paper money. And that can only be used for face-to-face transactions. Before Bitcoin, if you wanted to send money to someone remotely over the phone or the Internet, you could not use public infrastructure. You had to trust a private bank to open its ledger, deduct the amount from your account, and add it to the recipient’s account.

And if you didn’t use the same bank, multiple banks and their ledgers would get involved. But with Bitcoin, the ledger itself is the public blockchain. Anyone can add entries to the ledger and send their Bitcoin to anyone else. Regardless of nationality, race, religion, gender, gender identity, or creditworthiness, anyone can generate a Bitcoin address and receive digital payments at zero cost.

Bitcoin is the world’s first globally accessible public money. Is it perfect? Email wasn’t perfect when it was first created in 1972, either. Bitcoin is not the best currency in every respect. It’s not yet widely used everywhere, it’s not commonly used as a pricing standard, and it’s not always stable as a store of value. But Bitcoin works, and the fact that it works without the need for a trusted intermediary is amazing in itself.

This is a breakthrough in computer science, and for freedom, prosperity, and human progress, it may be as significant as the birth of the Internet. And Bitcoin is just the beginning. If we can replace private payment infrastructure, we can also replace other private bottlenecks that hinder human interaction. Why should we build more public infrastructure? Why should we choose a blockchain over corporate intermediaries? Why should we endure their inefficiencies and strive to improve them?

Why should the pioneers of this technology remain in the United States and not move abroad? The answer is simple. The private intermediaries that provide today’s critical infrastructure are getting fewer and bigger, and their failures are becoming ever more serious. For example, about 143 million Americans—roughly half the population—had their Social Security Numbers (SSNs) exposed in the Equifax hack.

The SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) network has relayed hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent transactions due to hacked member banks in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ecuador, and Russia. The FBI believes the largest of those attacks was likely orchestrated by North Korea. Corrupt junior employees at India’s Punjab National Bank forged SWIFT messages and stole $1.8 billion, the largest electronic bank heist—and the biggest bank robbery—ever.

In October 2016, about 1.2 million internet-connected devices were hacked and turned into a botnet, causing major websites across North America and Europe—such as CNN, Fox News, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal—to be knocked offline for hours. More and more physical devices are being connected to the internet to enhance their capabilities. And these connect through servers owned and operated by so-called “trusted private intermediaries.” This is the Internet of Things.

There have been cases where pacemakers from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, TRENDnet baby monitors, and Jeep vehicles have been hacked. In the Jeep case, hackers could control the car remotely and steer it off the road. Such vulnerabilities are inevitable in systems with a single point of failure.

Regardless of whether the single point of failure is a business or the government, no system should have one. Even before the Internet, similar bottlenecks existed: to broadcast a message, you had to go through three TV broadcasters or a handful of newspapers. Private companies are essential, but no critical infrastructure should depend on just a few companies.

The Internet eliminated the single points of failure in communication infrastructure and enabled competition among new media companies. Likewise, blockchain can decentralize payments and Internet of Things infrastructure by building on public rails. This technology is not ready to solve every problem today, but it is our best hope.

And as with the Internet in the 1990s, we need light-touch regulation and pro-innovation policies to allow these innovations to flourish in the United States. That is the path to benefit and safety for all Americans.