A month before the SEC dropped its suit against Coinbase, the crypto company donated $1m to Trump’s inaugural fund, a move many tech companies and their CEOs made to cozy up to Trump.
The millions that US tech companies invested in currying favor with Donald Trump seemed to pay off this week as the new administration issued a flurry of directives that relaxed regulations and dropped lawsuits previously aimed at holding the industry to account.
On the campaign trail, Trump said he would be the “crypto president” and nominated crypto-friendly commissioner, Paul Atkins, to lead the SEC, replacing Gary Gensler, who took an adversarial stance towards the industry.
In addition to Musk, several other tech CEOs have also found favor with Trump, including Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew.
“The striking image at the inauguration of so many leaders in attendance who had taken more aggressive stances towards Trump in his first term shows that they hope for more favorable treatment,” said Gautam Hans, law professor and director of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Clinic at Cornell.
