Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the billionaire twin brothers who co-founded the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, said they each donated $1 million in bitcoin to former President Trump.
“Over the past few years, the Biden Administration has openly declared war against crypto,” Tyler Winklevoss posted on the social platform X. “It has weaponized multiple government agencies to bully, harass, and sue the good actors in our industry in an effort to destroy it.”
Cameron Winklevoss, who said he also donated 15.47 BTC ($1 million) to Trump, posted on X that Trump “will put an end to the Biden Administration’s war on crypto,” dubbing the former president /”Pro-Bitcoin Pro-Crypto Pro-Business.”
During a campaign swing in California in early June, Trump pitched himself as the “crypto president,” portraying himself as a supporter of the industry.
President Biden has angered crypto advocates for his moves to regulate the industry, with the president recently vetoing a congressional resolution that would overturn a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule opposed by the industry. Republicans, including House Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), have also criticized the administration’s policies.
In 2022, Biden unveiled a crypto framework that would empower the SEC and the Federal Trade Commission to better regulate the industry.
The SEC accused Gemini last year of offering unregistered securities, and the company agreed to pay $21 million to settle the charges.
In his endorsement post, Tyler Winklevoss slammed what he called “the weaponization of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against crypto.”
“The Biden Administration’s SEC has not written a single rule for the crypto industry to help any of its participants understand how to navigate the regulatory landscape for this new asset paradigm,” he wrote. “This is by design.”
“By taking the ridiculous position that almost every crypto is a security, the Biden SEC has given itself the plausibility and carte blanche to bring litigation against any crypto project and company in the United States. The game is simple. Make it impossible to comply, then sue everyone for not complying. And that’s exactly what the Biden SEC has done over and over again to good actors in the space,” he argued.
Gemini has also been banned from operating crypto-lending programs in New York after the state’s attorney general, Letitia James (D), charged it with misleading thousands of investors about the risks associated with a program it launched.
The Winklevoss twins are each worth $2.7 billion, according to Forbes. They rose to fame after suing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he stole their ideas when launching Facebook.