There was, it hardly needs to be said, great despair expressed in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s re-election to the White House. However, that despair was not universal.
Plenty of people see a good deal of opportunity in the outcome, not least Ronald Strauss, chief executive of GetTangi Corporation, a cannabis and cryptocurrency company that aims to eliminate cash from the purchase of legal cannabis by launching its own cryptocurrency. It is a project that remains ongoing, according to its website.
In a post on LinkedIn, Strauss described Trump’s re-election as potentially “transformative” for the cryptocurrency industry due to his “pro-business stance and focus on financial independence” as well as his “approach to regulatory reform, decentralisation and industry empowerment”.
Strauss also noted that “his family’s financial entity, World Liberty Financial, could become a focal point for the expansion and normalisation of digital assets in the US and globally”, which ordinarily would not to be a motivation for a sitting president but might well be under a Trump presidency.
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He laid particular emphasis on Trump’s possible encouragement of “the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], CFTC [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] and other regulatory bodies to establish policies that balance growth with consumer protections, creating a clear pathway for investors, institutions and consumers to engage with cryptocurrency.”
In that respect he will no doubt be helped by the inclusion on GetTangi’s board of Zachary Fuentes, who was former deputy chief of staff in the first Trump administration.
But another person who knows his way around US politics and who has an interest is Brian Cowen, who served as taoiseach between 2008 and 2011 and currently sits on the GetTangi advisory board.
Cowen has been involved with GetTangi since 2019, during which time he suffered a debilitating stroke and a lengthy convalescence. But he returned to great fanfare in August 2022, when the company lauded his “international legal and regulatory knowledge, as and when it may be required in the future”.
As the company prepares to launch its Tangi token – its own cryptocurrency – that international legal and regulatory knowledge will be invaluable, Cantillon has no doubt. Cowen, after all, is a solicitor by training who also knows his way to the White House, so his experience will no doubt be drawn upon in the months and years to come.
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