How the ‘crypto president’ is winning over Silicon Valley – The Irish Times
A day in the life of Donald Trump’s presidency can feel like a political lifetime given the significance of his policy shifts. So eight years, politically speaking, is a very long time indeed.
It was in January 2017 that the billionaire Collison brothers, Patrick and John, publicly slammed Mr Trump’s immigration policies.
The Limerick natives pledged tens of thousands of dollars to the American Civil Liberties Union to help fight the US president’s plans for a travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries.
A spokesperson for their online payments company Stripe said at the time that the policies were “morally wrong” and “economically damaging”.
Worried about the impact an immigration clampdown would have on the tech sector, they were joined by others in Silicon Valley who spoke out against Trump at the time.
The political eco-sphere in US tech has shifted in the years since.
Having backed the Democrats for several years, Patrick Collison last year also threw his support behind Republican candidates. His hugely successful company, which reported handling payments worth $1.4 trillion last year, has enabled him to play a sizeable role on the donations front.
US Federal Election Commission figures show this included an $83,000 donation to the National Republican Congressional Committee along with $58,000 apiece to two Republican congressmen: Andy Barr and French Hill.
Collison joined a tide of big tech players in backing Republican candidates – following in the wake of billionaires Elon Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
[ Cliff Taylor: Tech bros who backed Trump are surely being hit by buyer’s remorseOpens in new window ]
By the time of Trump’s inauguration nearly all of the tech titans had weighed in behind the US president. Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook and Google’s Sundar Pichai all attended the party in Washington.
During the week it was announced that Patrick Collison would be joining Meta’s board of directors, having previously sat on an advisory body for the parent company behind social media networks Facebook and Instagram.
He will be joining the likes of avid Trump supporter Dana White, chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship franchise, and the former Trump political advisor, Dina Powell McCormick.
The Stripe chief executive has not endorsed Trump – but now finds himself rubbing shoulders with some very vocal supporters of the US president.
When asked for comment, Stripe declined. Collison was recently quoted saying he was not a supporter of either party but liked to assist candidates who had pro-growth economic policies.
Collison’s support for Republican candidates may be newly found but other Irish tech players have been publicly backing them and President Trump for some time, notably Eoghan McCabe, founder of messaging software company Intercom.
McCabe donated more than $200,000 to the president’s election campaign and the Republican party in 2024 and posted a picture of himself and Trump, then the presumptive presidential nominee, both giving a thumbs-up gesture at an event in May last year.
Many of the so-called “tech bros” see an alignment with Trump as crucial to their future success; Trump’s very supportive moves on crypto-currency are a big part of it.
He has moved quickly to enact a crypto-friendly environment, establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve and installing a new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Paul Atkins replaced the outgoing Gary Gensler, who was at odds with Trump over crypto and had taken legal action against the industry. Atkins is seen as much friendlier to the crypto crowd.
And Trump, on foot of complaints from the crypto scene, dissolved the US Department of Justice’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.
Stripe again started offering crypto as part of its services last year after having avoided it for six years. John Collison announced that “crypto is back” as the company started supporting “stablecoin” payments.
Stablecoins are crypto-currencies pegged to the value of traditional asset classes, making them supposedly less prone to volatility. Stripe also enabled crypto purchases in Europe last year, allowing customers to buy crypto currencies with credit or debit cards.
And the company puts its money where its mouth is, spending over $1 billion in acquiring stablecoin platform Bridge in October.
Patrick Collison has described stablecoins as “room-temperature superconductors for financial services” and has claimed that Stripe will build the world’s “best stablecoin infrastructure”.
Intercom boss McCabe announced in 2020 that after years of “dabbling” he was fully embracing Bitcoin. He told his followers on social network X in December last year that it was “still early” to invest in the crypto-currency – in other words, he expected its value to increase further.
After the San Francisco fundraising event where he was pictured with Trump last year, McCabe also said on X that he had spoken to six people who were backing the Republican candidate for “his policies on war, immigration, crypto and more“.
While the self-declared “crypto president” on the face of it is a boon for that realm – and the likes of Stripe and McCabe – the performance of crypto to date says otherwise.
Bitcoin, which soared to a record high of over €100,000 in the weeks after Trump’s election, has essentially pared all its gains over recent weeks. It has been unable to escape the general effects of Trump’s policies.
It is not obvious either that Big Tech’s support for Trump will pay off for the sector.
His efforts to fight an unprecedented global trade war, which will damage economic growth in the short-term, has already seen U-turns and carve-outs. The intricate ‘just-in-time’ supply models that US tech manufacturers use not only rely on open trade but a settled global trading system. Trump threatens both.
Elon Musk and his Tesla car company are the most obvious examples of those now at odds with policy. Musk is set to take a back seat in the administration after watching his own net worth and the valuation of his company sink precipitously.
Despite throwing almost $300 million into Trump’s election pot, Musk’s personal wealth is reported to have slumped by more than $140 billion since January.
This occurred as he took his proverbial chainsaw to various government departments. But it is also a reflection of the challenges Trump’s protectionism poses to Tesla and its reliance on open trade with China.
Apple’s iPhones were exempted from global tariffs last weekend, only for the president to then promise specific tariffs on semiconductors and electronic devices.
The damage is seen in the share prices of these companies. Last week Apple’s share price was down about 9 per cent since Trump’s inauguration in late January. Amazon’s had fallen about 22 per cent. Google’s was down 21 per cent and Meta’s had dropped about 16 per cent.
As in the case of Musk, the personal wealth of those who sit atop the tech firms has taken a battering since Trump first mentioned his “reciprocal tariffs” in February. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has lost more than €40 billion this year.
This is despite having overseen the decision by his newspaper, the Washington Post, not to back a candidate in the election, his donation of €1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and his declaration that the win was an “extraordinary political comeback”.
Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has declined by more than €20 billion during the same period.
The Meta boss met repeatedly with Trump before and after his election, appointed Trump-friendly picks to the Meta board and went out to bat against the European Union, labelling regulatory enforcement against his company as a type of “tariff”.
Yet criticism of Trump’s protectionist policies, which has been briefly forthcoming from some of his billionaire supporters such as hedge fund boss Bill Ackman, has been notably lacking from the tech firms.
This has raised questions about whether bespoke deals, which would insulate individual companies, are being struck in the background away from public scrutiny.
Stripe has avoided the market bloodbath because it has remained private. The Collisons’ net worth, at least on paper, remains undiminished.
Its peer companies, such as Block and PayPal, have had to endure the vagaries that come with quarterly reports and wild swings in share prices.
John Collison told the business news channel CNBC in February that the company had no short-term plans for an initial public offering. He was speaking as Stripe launched an offer to buy back employee shares that valued it at $91.5 billion (€80 billion) – close to an all-time high.
Collision said the company was beginning to see “real-world utility” in crypto and stablecoin, meaning international businesses were increasingly looking to use it as part of their day-to-day transactions.
The stablecoin scene has been growing. The dominant player, Tether, holds about 63 percent of the market and last year reported a $13 billion profit. With a tiny workforce, which it plans to grow to about 200 people this year, it has been described as the world’s most profitable company ever.
The mainstreaming of crypto, under a US president who is deeply enamoured with the concept, offers the likes of Stripe years more of potential growth.