NASHVILLE — Former U.S. President Donald Trump took the stage at the Bitcoin Conference Saturday, saying the U.S. must take a leadership position in crypto as the Republican candidate moved to tighten his grip on the increasingly powerful crypto voting and fundraising bloc.

“If we don’t do it, China will do it,” he said, speaking in a packed hall before over 3,000 attendees in Nashville. Crypto is “the steel industry of 100 years ago, you’re just in your infancy,” he said. “One day it probably will overtake gold. … There’s never been anything like it.”

He arrived at Nashville’s Music City Center after a major campaign fundraising event that targeted deep-pocketed crypto executives and raised tens of millions of dollars, according to sources. Thousands of bitcoiners camped out for hours to see the former president, a new convert to crypto after previously blasting digital assets. He’s now the first president to appear at a bitcoin event.

In the opening moments, he thanked the event’s organizers, and said there were lots of legends in the room. Trump name checked several crypto figures including Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the founders of the Gemini crypto exchange, and MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor.

Crypto exploded onto the 2024 election agenda in late May when Trump declared himself the industry’s candidate and declared: “If you’re in favor of crypto you’re gonna vote for Trump because they want to end it.”

His embrace supercharged a partisan realignment inside the crypto industry’s upper echelons. Suddenly, well-connected voters – hedge fund lawyers, startup founders and funders alike – who had previously voted Democratic began murmuring about supporting Trump as a salve to years of perceived bullying from President Joe Biden’s regulatory state.

They were joined at this three-day conference by throngs of die-hard Trump fans who piled into Nashville wearing “Make Bitcoin Great Again” hats of every color. To many of the 20,000 attendees, supporting Trump seemed a foregone conclusion. It just so happened he also now supported bitcoin.

Behind the scenes in Nashville, industry leaders rewarded Trump’s pivot with mounds of cash to fuel his campaign; a fundraiser immediately before his speech asked nearly $900,000 a ticket. Other down-ballot candidates in Nashville held fundraisers of their own.

Crypto’s proponents broadly see the 2024 election as their best chance to reshape hostile U.S. regulations; many consider Trump the candidate best suited to do it. That’s in spite of his prior stance during his presidency that bitcoin “was based on thin air.”

Ever the marketer, after he left the White House Trump released sellout NFT collections depicting himself in varying states of patriotism. Their millions of dollars in revenue gave the businessman a different perspective of the industry he once rejected.

Before Biden dropped out of the race his campaign made no effort to court crypto fans or Bitcoiners, at one point calling the Trump NFT buyers “suckers.” Coming after years of perceived lawfare from Biden-appointed Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler (who insists the industry largely is flouting U.S. law), Biden’s messaging was for many in crypto a final straw.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascendence may give Democrats a chance to reposition. Some lawmakers are pushing her for change. But the likely Democratic presidential nominee hasn’t delivered yet.