Transactional freedom is as critical a human right as the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said today at the North American Blockchain Summit. 

“If the government has the capacity to shut down your bank account, it has the capacity to make slaves of us all,” the 2024 independent presidential candidate said. 

Kennedy started the fireside chat talking about the malaise of today’s youth, as "a generation that has lost hope” in the promise of America. He cited a recent study where only 17 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 stated they were proud of the United States, versus 84 percent 10 years ago. Kennedy pointed to housing unaffordability and a loss of individual sovereignty as society “moves away from citizenship to servitude” as reasons for the bleak outlook. 

He was drawn to the cryptocurrency community because he saw an idealism and love for freedom – and for its potential as a solution to the problems afflicting the nation. This last point was made most clear during the Canadian trucker strike. 

“It was like Woodstock. It was this aggregation of people who were all doing something that we take for granted in this country and have the right to do – which is to assemble and petition their government,” he said. “The Canadian government used all kinds of surveillance technologies to identify the truckers and shut down their bank accounts.”  

Read more from the conference: Andrew Yang on Using Blockchain to Solve America’s Big Problems

“In this country, the current federal government policy for this administration is to make war on Bitcoin and other digital currencies. To have punitive taxes on mining,” he said. 

If he becomes president, Kennedy said he’d protect the spirit of innovation and make America the central hub for digital currencies. 

“Smaller owners and traders shouldn’t be taxed for capital gains. You should be taxed for that increase in value when you cash them in. We shouldn’t be treating it as a commodity, we should treat it as a currency,” he added, to audience applause. 

With the summit taking place in Texas, mining was a key topic. Kennedy compared the importance of building out the national grid system with the first computer network for the Internet. 

“All of the devices today are the result of the revolution that took place because we built a national grid for telecommunications,” he said. “The same thing will happen with a national grid for energy. We turn every American into an energy entrepreneur or every home into a power plant. And we power this country on what Roosevelt called America's industrial genius.” 

Bitcoin mining in Texas has actually helped stabilize the power grid in a state that has suffered from power disruptions through extreme heat and hurricanes. Kennedy said that facet of Bitcoin mining could enormously benefit Texas.