It’s been a bit of a struggle for Bitcoin (BTC) and the crypto market today amid wider macro worries. But it’s hanging in there by the skin of its teeth.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin is increasingly becoming a political bone of contention in the States.

The extremely forthright and polarising Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has announced his run for the top job in the US of A… to lead, erm, “our Great American Comeback“.

Whatever American-voting crypto heads might think of his brand of right-wing politics broadly and granularly (and some of that is mightily controversial, which we won’t get into here), there’s at least one thing that’ll give them pause for thought… he’s pro Bitcoin and is not-at-all shy about making some noise about it.

Here’s part of what he told Elon Musk on an embarrassingly glitch-filled Twitter Spaces overnight (AEST), in which more than 800,000 people apparently tuned in, (although for much of it, they apparently couldn’t hear too much that was intelligible)…

“You have every right to do Bitcoin. The only reason these people in Washington don’t like it is because they don’t control it.

“Bitcoin represents a threat to them,” DeSantis continued. “They’re trying to regulate it out of existence.

“The current regime, clearly, they have it out for Bitcoin. And if it continues for another four years, they’ll probably end up killing it.

“As president we’ll protect the ability to do things like Bitcoin.”

DeSantis is also very much against the idea of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), citing their level of digital overreach and privacy invasion as huge reasons for concern.

“You must get authorization from Congress,” DeSantis said of a CBDC. “I can tell you, if I’m president, we are not doing a central bank digital currency.

“I see it as a massive transfer of power from individual consumers to a central authority, and I don’t think that’s good for a free society,” he said. “I’m a ‘no’ on [a] central bank digital currency.”

Meanwhile, Donald “I Like NFTs Now But Only the Ones that Show Me as a Trumped Up Hero” Trump, who is also in the hunt as a Republican presidential candidate, reportedly posted the following piece of parody on his Instagram…

Yep, this is the world we live in. Maybe it’s a simulation after all.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.15 trillion, down about 1.5% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

 

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has an interesting take or two on the presidential race…

Meanwhile, it appears Trezor, the chief rival to the crypto hardware wallet firm Ledger, is copping some bad PR of its own…

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