Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris differ on everything from tariffs to abortion. Yet both have made their support for crypto a part of their platforms.
Trump, who used to think cryptocurrency “seems like a scam,” now says that, if elected, he’ll turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet” and make it a “bitcoin superpower.” He promises to fire Gary Gensler, the current chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has cracked down on the emergent industry and accused multiple crypto companies and executives of violating American law.
While it’s not quite right to say almost no one likes crypto, there is certainly no public groundswell for it.
Though Harris is less hyperbolic in her support, she’s also emphasized her backing for the industry. She says her administration, should it come to pass, will “encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets.” And she has told big money donors she will ensure a “safer business environment” for investors in the currency.
Why so much attention to this particular issue? The industry and its supporters like to point to “crypto voters.” But while it’s not quite right to say almost no one likes crypto, there is certainly no public groundswell for it. Less than 1 in 5 Americans has ever owned or traded cryptocurrency. When voters are asked their opinion about cryptocurrency, they are more likely than not to have a negative one, saying they don’t trust it. Even for young men, who are disproportionately likely to own cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency isn’t among their top 20 issues.
The answer, then, must lie elsewhere. It is almost certainly not a coincidence that the cryptocurrency industry has come seemingly out of nowhere to emerge as the largest corporate donor in federal elections in the 2024 election cycle. How else to explain that the industry’s Orwellian-named super PAC Fairshake is pouring millions into backing favored candidates of both parties and attacking those it wants to lose? Earlier this year, the industry successfully targeted Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Katie Porter in their House and Senate primaries, respectively.
More recently, the industry has poured money into Ohio’s Senate race, bashing Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown. In Southern California, millions in crypto money are backing Republican Reps. Michelle Steel, Mike Garcia and Young Kim — highly competitive races that could be key to Democrats regaining control of the House.
Tellingly, the ads backed by the industry are almost never about, you know, crypto. Those targeting Bowman and Porter accused the former of not being tough on crime and the latter of hypocrisy on (ironically) campaign finance. The anti-Brown ads hammer him on immigration, while touting his opponent, crypto-friendly Republican Bernie Moreno as a family-friendly ally of Big Oil.
As of June 30, crypto corporations had spent $119 million, mainly through Fairshake. That’s nearly half of all corporate spending on the 2024 campaigns to date, and well ahead of other industries like Big Oil. What’s motivated the industry to ramp up its spending? In a word, legislation.
No one has articulated a use case for cryptocurrency that makes any sense for the typical law-abiding investor or voter. “The U.S. has proven to be one of the most active enforcers of penalties and legal action against crypto companies,” CNBC reported at the end of 2023. Leading the way have been the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Some of the industry’s biggest names have been caught: In March, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud. Last year, Changpeng Zhao and his crypto exchange Binance pled guilty to violating money laundering and sanctions laws and agreed to pay over $4 billion in fines. Under Gensler, the SEC has brought more than 100 enforcement actions against the sector. Crypto advocates, unsurprisingly, aren’t happy with this. They favor a bill that would see the digital currency largely regulated by the small and financial industry-friendly Commodity Futures Trading Commission, significantly downsizing the SEC’s authority in the area. Industry bigwigs and billionaire investors alike are also chomping at the bit to see Gensler axed. Last month, entrepreneur Mark Cuban, a prominent Harris supporter, even suggested himself as a replacement. Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently told Bloomberg TV, “Gary Gensler’s reign of terror on the crypto industry is going to come to an end very soon.” (Ripple, it won’t surprise you to know, is in an ongoing multiyear battle with the SEC over, yes, whether it should have registered its XRP token as a security.) The crypto industry promotes its products as a way for the financially underserved to get a piece of the action. But the true believers parroting this ridiculous line don’t bother to explain why they shouldn’t just invest in the stock market instead. Similarly, to this day, no one has articulated a use case for cryptocurrency that makes any sense for the typical law-abiding investor or voter. It’s not an inflation hedge. Its value varies way too much to be useful as a currency substitute. Fraud is rampant in the space. For all the grand pronouncements that crypto would revolutionize finance, the only thing it has so far enabled is greater ease in cash laundering and other illegal behavior. It’s used by a rogue’s gallery of international villains, including Chinese fentanyl producers and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Yet in the big bucks sweepstake that is the American system of legalized corruption, politely called campaign financing, none of this seems to matter. Instead, the crypto industry’s generous donations again demonstrate that Americans have the best politics money can buy.
Helaine R. Olen
Helaine R. Olen is the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" and a co-author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated." She has been a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and her work has also appeared in numerous other publications, including The New York Times and The Atlantic. 
