Presidents most likely to have owned Bitcoin

Happy Monday. It’s Presidents’ Day here in the U.S., which feels like a good time to look back across American history to ask whether any of the country’s leaders might have bought Bitcoin. It’s clear the country’s current leader, President Joe Biden, is no fan of Satoshi’s creation and neither is his predecessor, Donald Trump, who in 2021 called Bitcoin a “scam.” But what about the others? I put this question to Luke Nichter, a professor at Chapman University who specializes in presidential history, and he identified three names from earlier eras of the republic.

Nichter made clear he doesn’t think any U.S. president would have recognized Bitcoin as official money for the basic reason that starting a new currency typically goes over about as well with rulers as raising a private army. But he did identify presidents who, for different reasons, would have tolerated Bitcoin more than our recent leaders—and might even have bought some of their own.

The first name on the list is the one that will come to mind to anyone familiar with U.S. history: Andrew Jackson. The seventh president, serving from 1829 to 1837, opened the White House to the proverbial “men in muddy boots” and famously killed a proposed early version of the Federal Reserve. According to Nichter, Jackson despised the incumbent financial elites of his day and so would likely have sympathized with those (like the Bitcoiners of today) who shared that view.

Next on the list is the 37th president, Richard Nixon. While a less intuitive choice than Jackson, Nixon, according to Nichter, was a currency radicalist in his own right famous for taking the U.S. off the gold standard in 1971. While many economists had urged previous presidents to take this step, they refused out of fear for how banks and markets would react. Nixon’s decision to break with this orthodoxy suggests he would have brought an open mind to crypto projects—not to mention he shared a paranoid quality common to many Bitcoiners.

The final president whom Nichter identified as a potential Bitcoin fan is from the founding era, Thomas Jefferson. Serving from 1801 to 1809, Jefferson was famous for his decentralized, agrarian vision for America that stood in stark contrast to the radical industrialized one put forth by Alexander Hamilton. Plus, as Nichter notes, Jefferson was a famous tinkerer who was forever carrying out experiments with his crops, his livestock, and more. It’s not a stretch to imagine the third president buying a little bit of crypto just to see what it was all about.

For good measure, I also asked Nichter if he could think of any presidents who would have hated Bitcoin and tried to stamp it out. He named two from the first half of the 20th century: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Both favored central planners and served as wartime presidents who had their hands full with plots and conspiracies, and would likely have viewed Bitcoiners as another potential threat to the country.

So there you have it—if you have the day off today and are out there buying things, take a moment to reflect on why you are using the currency in question. Happy Presidents’ Day.

Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts

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