- Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he would lay out his campaign’s crypto platform by Thanksgiving.
- Ramaswamy has pitched himself as the most crypto-friendly candidate in the field.
- He is being helped by Ryan Selkis, the firebrand CEO of crypto research firm Messari.
Longshot Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is planning to put out a comprehensive crypto policy framework by Thanksgiving, he said at the Messari Mainnet conference in New York City on Thursday.
“We’re about 75% of the way there,” Ramaswamy said.
Ramaswamy, 38, has pitched himself as the most crypto-friendly candidate in the field.
He is currently in a distant third place with 7% support in a weighted average of national polls, well behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
As of August, no other candidate had released a comprehensive crypto platform, according to CoinDesk, though some have signalled they would take a less combative approach than President Joe Biden, whose agencies have undertaken multiple enforcement actions against the crypto industry.
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Former President Donald Trump has said he’s “not a fan” of cryptocurrencies, though he appears to hold almost $3 million in Ether, according to government watchdog and crypto research firm Arkham Intelligence.
Trump leads all Republican candidates by a vast — and growing — margin in national polls with 55% of the vote, according to election site 538.
For his part, DeSantis, in second place with 14% of the vote, has promised to end what he calls Biden’s “war on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency” without providing very much detail, and is an outspoken opponent of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
On Wednesday, Ramaswamy echoed industry talking points, slamming the Securities and Exchange Commission for “regulation by enforcement.” He also went after its chairman, Gary Gensler, who Ramaswamy said “cannot state whether Ethereum is a security or not.”
“One of my chief issues with agencies like the FDA and the SEC is this regulation-via-enforcement paradigm, where they refuse to pre-specify what the rules actually are,” he said.
Ramaswamy vowed to lay off three-fourths of the employees “at most federal agencies, including the SEC.”
He asked conference attendees to send their thoughts on crypto legislation to a dedicated email address, crypto@vivek2024.com.
Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, an avid supporter of Ramaswamy, said he had been helping the candidate craft his crypto platform.
“A major presidential candidate actually having a fully baked position on crypto is something — I hope people will take up Vivek and his campaign on actually submitting some feedback,” Selkis said on stage.