A small number of world leaders have publicly supported digital assets during their tenure or during election campaigns. Although the technology is relatively young and has not been fully tested as a political issue, many candidates have already tied their popularity to cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
Now, as a former El Salvador in his bid for the next term, Naib Bukele is arguably the world's most outspoken national leader on cryptocurrency. He led a legislative measure to make Bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador.
Under Bukele's leadership, Bitcoin (BTC) trading has been promoted throughout El Salvador and** after the crypto market's downturn in 2022 reported that the country's Bitcoin investments were profitable. In 2024, El Salvador's Ministry of Education plans to launch a Bitcoin education program in public schools.
In November, J**ier Milei defeated his rival Sergio Massa in Argentina's ** runoff, at a time when Argentina was facing alarming inflation and general dissatisfaction with the national economy. Milley once mentioned Bitcoin.
Many crypto supporters in Argentina are calling for the new to follow Bukele's lead, recognizing Bitcoin as legal tender in the country and ignoring the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) travel rules. At the time of publication, Milley had been in office for less than a week and had yet to enact any cryptocurrency-related policies.
Donald Trump, a former U.S. leader, is currently facing multiple felony charges related to attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and engaging in fraudulent business practices. In the Republican Party, he is not the most outspoken voice on cryptocurrencies — such as Vivek Ramaswamy or Robert F. Kennedy kennedy jr.But he has tied digital assets directly to his 2024 campaign.
Trump has conducted several non-fungible token (NFT) offerings, one of which showed him capitulating to the authorities in Georgia. However, after he left office in 2021, he called cryptocurrencies "fake" and "a disaster waiting to happen."
After a period of political and economic turmoil in the UK, Rishi Sunak supported several policies in favor of digital assets before being sworn in as Prime Minister of the UK. As the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, he said in 2020 and 2021 that he planned to prioritise fintech and that he would consult on groundbreaking reforms.
Since taking office in October 2022, Sunak has rarely spoken about cryptocurrencies in public. Shortly after Sunak became prime minister, crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy, and a series of high-profile crashes and arrests shook the space.
Like Trump and Bukele, Faustin Archan Tuadella, a leader who actively uses social, announced policies related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain on X. In April 2022, Tuadra announced that Bitcoin would be considered legal tender in the Central African Republic, along with the franc. He then launched the Sango program, which aims to establish a "fiat crypto hub" in the Central African Republic to attract businesses and global crypto enthusiasts.
During the 2020 re-elections, Belarusian Alexander Lukashenko was widely accused of voter fraud against the opposing candidate Svetlana Tstrikanuskaya. The policies he supports are aimed at supporting cryptocurrency mining.
Even before the controversial election, Lukashenko was an early adopter of digital assets in Belarus, proposing in 2017 to legalize cryptocurrencies and certain initial coin offerings in Belarus. Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces in 2022, Belarus has been subject to the same sanctions, including for the illegal use of cryptocurrencies.
In the crypto space, many people associate the Bahamas with the headquarters of FTX, which once housed the defunct crypto exchange, and its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. Companies like FTX moved their headquarters to the Bahamas in 2021 in part because of the country's good crypto regulatory policies, which Prime Minister Philip Davis supports.
Prior to the FTX collapse, Davis said the Bahamas' goal was to create a regulatory regime that would allow crypto companies to "thrive" on the island. The Prime Minister expressed his support for the Bahamas' central bank digital currency (CBDC), the Sand Dollar, which was launched in 2020.
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