The loudest cheering of the night was prompted by Trump's promise to fire Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a regulatory agency that has brought a flurry of lawsuits against crypto businesses under the Biden administration.
Separately, Trump has promised to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the darknet marketplace Silk Road, who is currently serving a life sentence in prison. Silk Road, through which people bought and sold drugs and other contraband, was one of the first online services to accept Bitcoin as payment. The severity of Ulbricht's sentence is widely considered disproportionate by Bitcoiners, who have long called for his release.
antitrust
An early indicator of how the Trump administration intends to forge ties with Big Tech will be the fate of Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan.
Khan, at the age of 35, becomes the youngest ever FTC Chairman Flashpoint in election campaignAmong Democrat donors, his approach to antitrust enforcement and corporate power was deeply controversial. GoogleMeta, Amazon and Microsoft all faced legal challenges during his tenure, though some were more successful than others.
“Lena Khan … is a person who is not helping America,” said LinkedIn co-founder and Democrat Donner Hoffman. told CNN In July. Trump's donor Elon Musk also expressed his dislike. “He will be fired soon,” he said Said Khan's last week.
Dan Ives, an analyst at financial services firm Wedbush, described Khan as a “nightmare for the tech sector”, adding there was a belief among analysts that his departure would serve as a catalyst for more Big Tech deals. “Musk's influence over Trump could also motivate and accelerate a potential Khan exit,” he said.
Trump has vaguely suggested that “something” should be done about Google to make the company “more fair.” Vance has been more outspoken in his praise of Khan”doing a great job,
It appears that Vance sees the break-up as a solution to Big Tech's claimed censorship of conservatives. “When you have companies like Facebook and Google censoring American citizens, making it harder for Americans to have a say in their political process, that's a big problem,” the vice president-elect said. Said In September, Google's acquisition of YouTube in 2006 was given as an example. “I think there should be an antitrust solution to this.”
Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the left-leaning technology trade group Chamber of Progress, said the new Trump administration is unlikely to drop antitrust cases against Big Tech. memorandum On Wednesday, many of these were launched under his first term. “But he will likely try to use these suits as leverage on the companies to get favorable treatment on speech and content concerns.”
It is unclear whether Khan will serve under Trump. His team declined to comment on Wednesday. Former FTC Chairman Bill Kovacik said that this is likely to happen after a few weeks.close to zero,
Joel Khalili, Morgan Meeker and Zeyi Yang contributed reporting.