FORBES – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), the Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful vying with President Joe Biden for the White House in next year’s election, has positioned himself as a major bitcoin supporter (in contrast to a leaked European Union draft document).
RFK Jr.’s bitcoin support comes as bitcoin and crypto are increasingly featuring in the U.S. presidential race, alongside reports China could be gearing up for a crypto boom, with Republican candidates Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy both praising bitcoin.
Now, after the world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock’s chief executive Larry Fink suddenly flipped bullish on bitcoin, RFK Jr. has warned that Wall Street’s planned crypto “revolution” will “trap [everyone in] slavery.”
“I’ve talked about some kind of suspension of the capital gains taxes for conversion of bitcoin,” RFK Jr. said during a Spaces broadcast on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, referring to his proposal to scrap the capital gains tax on bitcoin sales, but with a million-dollar cap to prevent large investment managers from exploiting the exemption.
“One of the dangers we want to avoid is creating huge windfalls for BlackRock and for Goldman Sachs. But there may be evidence that we may be able to do that with a million-dollar cap, so small investors who are into bitcoin would not have to pay the capital gains taxes, but super large holding companies like BlackRock and Goldman would.”
RFK Jr., who has also promised to overhaul the U.S. financial system to back government debt Treasury bills with bitcoin and other commodities, went on to warn the recent flurry of applications to launch a U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), led by BlackRock, will undermine attempts to free people from financial control and lead to the adoption of a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC), sometimes called a digital dollar.
“They’re funneling people into these ETFs,” RFK Jr. said. “As soon as they create a central bank digital currency (CBDC), BlackRock will transform those ETFs from bitcoin into CBDCs and trap us all in that kind of slavery.”
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