Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said Wednesday that crypto companies who think they can walk away from an industry market structure bill currently stalling in Congress “should move to El Salvador.”
Solomon was invoking the words of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said earlier this month that certain crypto leaders—who have argued they reject the bill if they don’t like its final language—are “nihilists” who should move to the Latin American nation. Bessent went further a few days later, calling such crypto executives “recalcitrant actors.”
The comments may have been referring to U.S. crypto giant Coinbase and its CEO, Brian Armstrong. Last month, Armstrong abruptly pulled Coinbase’s support for the Senate’s crypto market structure bill, derailing a key vote on the legislation that still has yet to be rescheduled. Armstrong said at the time that Coinbase would “rather have no bill than a bad bill.”
Speaking Wednesday at Mar-a-Lago, Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon echoed Bessent’s remarks, saying he was “in the same camp” as the treasury secretary when it came to the Senate’s crypto bill. The crypto industry can’t operate without a rules-based structure, Solomon said.
“It is very, very important that we codify a rules-based system,” Solomon said. “It’s not going to be perfect.”
“If there are people who think we’re going to operate without a rules-based system, they’re probably wrong and should move to El Salvador,” the Goldman Sachs CEO continued.
Solomon was speaking Wednesday at the World Liberty Forum, an event held by the Trump family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial. When asked by a CNBC moderator why he was there, Solomon bluntly replied that the Trump family’s business partners, the Witkoff family, had asked him to come.
“I’m here because Alex Witkoff called me,” Solomon said. “Alex and his family are great clients of the firm.”
Solomon further commented on his own personal Bitcoin holdings, saying he owns “very little, but some” of the top cryptocurrency—and described himself more as an “observer of Bitcoin.”
The event was attended by many powerful business leaders in traditional finance and crypto, including Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder pardoned by President Donald Trump last fall. Attendees also included lieutenants of a powerful UAE sheikh who discreetly bought a 49% stake in the Trump family’s crypto company last year.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is scheduled to speak at the Mar-a-Lago event later this afternoon.
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