Anika Begay
The cryptocurrency industry is making a concerted effort to take over the Democratic Party ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with a new organization hoping to counter former President Donald Trump’s growing influence among cryptocurrency advocates.
Political battle over cryptocurrencies
According to a fortune relationshipA new grassroots organization called “Crypto for Harris” is leading the charge, hosting a virtual town hall on Wednesday featuring high-profile Democratic politicians and industry leaders. The goal, according to organizer G. Clay Miller, is to “reset the narrative” around cryptocurrencies and the Democratic Party.
“There was a lot of pent-up energy from Democratic cryptocurrency players who saw this as an opportunity to reset the narrative for Democrats on cryptocurrency,” Miller, a former Senate aide and organizer of Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign, told Fortune.
The last one Election cycle has seen a surge in campaign funding from the digital assets sector, primarily from Sam Bankman-Fried and his now-bankrupt company FTX, which has spent more than $93 million in donations to candidates of both parties.
However, after Bankman-Fried’s fall from grace, Democrats quickly distanced themselves from the disgraced founder, and the party took a more skeptical stance toward the industry.
Meanwhile, Republicans have positioned themselves as the champions of digital resources sectorintroducing two bills from the House Financial Services Committee.
Many in the industry have also blamed Biden administration officials and political appointees for the continuous repression on the industry by regulatory bodies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
This shift has led the industry to rush to fill the Bankman-Fried-sized void in political donations, with companies like Coinbase and a16z crypto leading the lobbying and funding efforts through organizations like “Stand with Crypto” and Fairshake, a super-sized digital asset-focused Political Action Committee (PAC) with a war chest exceeding $200 million.
Countering former President Donald Trump
The former president’s newfound embrace of Bitcoin and digital assets has also complicated Democrats’ efforts to take over the sector. Trump, who once denounced Bitcoin as a “scam,” has since become a full-throated advocate for the sector, offering a mass speech at the 2024 annual Bitcoin conference in July.
“If you actually look at the actions of the Trump administration while he was in office, they were not particularly pro-crypto,” Miller said. “There’s a misconception among a lot of Republican pro-crypto supporters about how pro-Trump it is.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has remained a blank slate when it comes to digital assets, despite her team making some inroads into the blockchain space, including holding one-on-one meetings with industry leaders.
However, some have expressed skepticism about a possible reset by the Biden administration, pointing to top advisers to his campaign who had previously carved out a role anti-blockchain positions.
According to the report, Wednesday’s Crypto for Harris event will feature a number of pro-digital asset Democrats, including Reps. Ritchie Torres and Wiley Nickel, as well as a video prepared by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. But despite the group’s efforts, no one from Harris’s campaign is set to make an appearance.
Miller and his co-organizers, Democratic strategist Will Schweitzer and former Justice Department lawyer Amanda Wick, are still outlining the group’s goals after the town meeting, including a national tour that will likely include fundraising efforts.
While Crypto for Harris may not be able to change the course of the campaign or take over the industry, Miller said the goal is to get the conversation started and dampen the hype around Trump’s Hug of digital resources.
“The idea came from watching Trump cultivate overwhelming support in the cryptocurrency space,” Miller said. “We wanted to create a counter-narrative and make the case for why Democrats should be the party of cryptocurrency.”
Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com
