Florida governor, promising CBDC ban, comes second in Iowa caucuses
Florida Governor and 2024 US presidential candidate Ron DeSantis finished second in a crucial battleground state for the Republican nomination.
According to multiple media reports on the Jan. 15 Iowa Republican caucus, DeSantis lost to former US President Donald Trump with 21 percent of the vote. At the time of publication, Iowa results showed 23,420 people voted for DeSantis to 56,260 for Trump, who won the Florida governor's eight delegates at the Republican National Convention on July 1, 2010.
In the year DeSantis, who officially launched his presidential bid in July 2023, has vowed to ban central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in the US if elected. Before launching his campaign, he signed a bill in Florida that would restrict the use of federally mandated CBDCs in the state, saying they threaten consumers' financial freedom.
The Florida governor has polled more than 10 points behind Trump and, according to some polls, behind presidential candidate Nikki Haley since starting his campaign. Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has proposed a crypto-focused policy framework, dropped out of the race following the results of the Iowa caucuses on January 15, finishing with 8 percent of the vote.
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The nominees for the Republican and Democratic parties won't be announced until July and August, respectively. At the time of publication, the polls indicated that, barring unforeseen circumstances, US President Joe Biden and Trump would be the nominees. The two candidates will be 81 and 78 years old on Election Day in 2024. Trump is facing numerous state and federal criminal charges and legal challenges to remove him from the ballot.
It's unclear what role crypto and blockchain will play among US voters in November. A poll released by the Crypto Council for Innovation on January 2 suggested that crypto users could be a “key swing voting group” in the 2024 elections.
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