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What a surprising seven days. If you had told me three months ago that Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party were ready to do business with crypto, I would have replied, “Put down the laughing gas.”
And yet this week, we saw Vice President Harris, a former California attorney general who made her name prosecuting financial fraud, express support for blockchain technology.
That should be music to the ears of crypto folk — for years, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and the Blockchain Association’s Kristin Smith have been making that very argument.
Still, many in crypto are sceptical of Harris’s pivot and dismissed her comments as “hollow words.” Harris, after all, is a key member of the very administration that tapped Gary Gensler to head the Securities and Exchange Commission and execute a crackdown on the industry.
Then again, her shift makes a lot of sense when you take into account the sheer clout crypto is flexing in Washington.
The industry accounts for about half of the $248 million corporations have contributed to political action committees in the 2024 cycle. That level of cash is bound to get Democrats’ attention in a heated election year.
It was striking to see Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from the Bronx, lambaste Gensler in a House hearing this week for pushing to have most cryptocurrencies regulated like stocks and bonds.It used to be only Republican lawmakers who made that case.
Moreover, the Harris campaign has taken soundings from Mark Cuban, the crypto-loving billionaire.
Cuban, a Harris supporter, let it be known in a media blitz that he wouldn’t mind replacing Gensler at the SEC should the vice president win in November. Anthony Scaramucci, the hedge fund manager and pro-crypto podcaster, is also poised to help Democrats get up to speed on digital assets.
In any event, this was the week when Harris and the Dems finally came out and challenged Donald Trump’s hold on the crypto space.
Will the pivot work? Impossible to say. But if Harris does win, you can bet the industry will be expecting a bipartisan bill that makes crypto a separate asset class with its own rules.
And Gensler? He’s probably gone.
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