Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would back the United States Dollar with Bitcoin.
Kennedy made his remarks during a Heal-the-Divide PAC event where claimed his uncle, former president John F. Kennedy, "understood" fiat currency along with the "importance of hard currency."
Fiat currency is a currency not backed by a commodity like gold or silver, though is issued as legal tender by governments.
"He understood the danger of pure fiat currency with no other option," Kennedy said. "He understood the relationship between fiat currency and war ... also these giant aggregations of wealth and the unbalanced disparities in wealth that are the ultimate yield of every fiat currency."
The Democratic Presidential candidate detailed the "threat to America" from inflation and destruction of the dollar as the global currency.
"Fiat currency was invented to fund wars,” he said. “I like base currencies because they make it more difficult, you have to go to the public. You can't just print money to fund the war and tax the public through the hidden tax of inflation. You actually have to go to the public and say, ‘Here's what this war is going to cost.’”
"Bitcoin is part of the basket of hard currencies I think that the Kennedy administration is going to encourage the proliferation of and the provocation of."
Kennedy continued detailing the concept of self-custody saying, "Your wallet should be your own."
“My plan would be to start very, very small, perhaps one percent of issued T-bills would be backed by hard currency, by gold, silver, platinum or bitcoin,” Kennedy said, adding his administration would increase the amount annually depending on the outcome. "Backing dollars and U.S. debt obligations with hard assets could help restore strength back to the dollar, rein in inflation and usher in a new era of American financial stability, peace and prosperity."
"The benefits include facilitating innovation and spurring investment, ensuring citizen privacy, incentivizing ventures to grow their business and tech jobs in the United States rather than in Singapore, Switzerland, Germany and Portugal,” he added. “Non-taxable events are unreportable and that means it will be more difficult for governments to weaponize currency against free speech, which as many of you know, is one of my principal objectives."
However, Kennedy emphasized Bitcoin is not a security and shouldn't be regulated as such, though expressed his intent to "put an end to the current policies of the Biden administration that are invited by Choke Point 2.0 to punish banks that are dealing with Bitcoin."
Operation Choke Point was a 2013 initiative from the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigating United States banks regarding business with firearm dealers and other "high risk" business.
