The first US presidential debate is scheduled for June 27 – will crypto be on the agenda?

In the year Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the candidates for the US presidency in 2024, will fight for the first time in four years in June.

In a May 15 post on X-Post, President Biden said he had accepted an invitation from CNN for a June 27 presidential debate, challenging Trump to respond. In a statement to Fox News, the former US president reportedly accepted the date of the event, stating that he was “ready and willing” to send President Biden on his social media site Truth Social.

Trump has been charged in a New York court with hush money payments to famous movie stars and business fraud related to the 2016 US presidential election. It is unclear whether other pending criminal cases in the District of Columbia, Florida and Georgia will conflict with the June hearing.

If confirmed, the debate will take place before either Trump or President Biden officially accept their party's nomination for President of the United States. The Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention are expected to be held in August and July. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who trailed Presidents Biden and Trump in the polls, said he was “excluded” from the debate.

Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis have often discussed crypto-related issues and central bank digital currencies during their run for the Republican Party nomination for president. As recently as May 8, during a dinner for supporters who bought his Invincible Tokens, Trump said “good” for crypto in the United States. However, the former president has previously referred to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) as fraud.

Related: Neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump are crypto champions

Many lawmakers and industry leaders who seem to support President Biden have asked him to think about how crypto-oriented people will vote in 2024. Some have suggested that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will file multiple enforcement actions against crypto companies under the Biden administration. And Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren attacks digital assets through legislation and public statements.

Although President Biden has rarely spoken out about digital assets personally, he has used his position to oppose legislation and policies that many in the space disapprove of. On May 8, when the House of Representatives considered passing a joint resolution that would overturn the SEC's policy on banks holding crypto, President Biden said he would oppose the measure. The resolution passed the House with the support of 21 Democratic lawmakers and headed to the Senate.

The last time President Biden and Trump faced off in person was the first US presidential debate at Case Western Reserve University in September 2020. Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, wrote in his book that the former president was diagnosed with Covid-19 before the debate but kept the results a secret.

Neither then-candidate Biden nor Trump discussed cryptocurrency or blockchain during the two debates. At the time of publication, President Biden's campaign website did not have an ‘issues' page for his policy positions, while Trump's website included his position on the economy. Neither site mentions digital assets.

“Many crypto holders are single-issue voters and we risk losing them in this presidential election,” Democratic Representative Willie Nickell said in a May 11 post.

With no major US presidential candidate having a definitive position on crypto at any point, it's unclear whether the technology will be on the topic during the June 27 debate or the second one on September 10. Election Day in the United States is November 5th. .

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