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Crypto politics brings the money

Politics is great, isn’t it? No! No, it’s not. It’s horrid and exhausting and all the worse for the patina of hope that comes with some politics which so often goes unfulfilled. But we’re in the thick of it in the U.S. right now, and it’s hard to escape. Churchill said it well when he said democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Politics, then, is a means to an end, a necessary evil.

Speaking of evil, have you heard what the crypto industry is doing? Oh, hey! It’s been fascinating to watch crypto politics evolve over the past two years or so. For such a nascent and user-unfriendly tech as blockchain has proven to be so far, you have to give it to industry leaders. They understood immediately what matters in Washington.

"Money moves the needle," Brian Armstong, CEO of Coinbase, the largest U.S. crypto-exchange, said last year. "For better or worse, that's how our system works."

In a great go-big-or-go-home moment, the crypto industry has donated nearly half of all corporate political donations so far in 2024, according to this report. It’s quite amazing, really. Coinbase and Ripple have each given $50.1 million and $49 million respectively. Jump Crypto, an investor in Decential Media, is also listed as having given $15 million so far, according to Public Citizen. Most of it is going to Fairshake, a pro-crypto political action committee.

An aide on the Kamala Harris campaign went on the record this week at the Democratic National Convention to say his boss has a plan to support crypto, according to Bloomberg News. A week before, a Democrat-linked group held a virtual town hall to talk crypto policy, including party heavyweights Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff. What great timing, right? So fortuitous. The description of Goldman Sachs as a vampire squid that’s “relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” as Matt Taibbi so memorably put it, comes to mind, just that I don’t think politicians are any different from the Wall Street juggernaut.

 There are no specifics on a Harris crypto policy approach that I know of, but it’s a step in the right direction. Digital assets should be non-partisan, and I welcome conservative views on it, just as long as they’re not coming from anyone linked to Donald Trump. The money is pouring in and that’s one thing the Democrats, and all politicians, never ignore.

It also emerged this week that Trump’s crypto holdings are valued between $1 million and $5 million and that he separately received $7.15 million related to an NFT project. But wait, there’s more. A crypto platform called “The Defiant Ones” was announced by Trump this week and promoted by his sons Don Jr. and Eric. Described by as Eric “digital real estate,” it appears Trump smells money in digital assets after calling Bitcoin a scam when he was president.

This is where clarity on the rules about promoting digital assets from the SEC would come in handy. Like, how is Trump’s NFT project different than what Kim Kardashian did to earn a $1.3 million SEC fine in 2022? Or, why did the SEC go after the Stoner Cats project – fining them $1 million for allegedly selling unregistered securities -- yet Trump’s brazen cash grab is left alone? It makes you want to sue the agency to force some transparency.

Real Clear Politics has Harris up 48.4 percent to Trump’s 46.9 percent as of this writing. It’s been an amazing few weeks for Harris and everyone in crypto should be cheering her on. What’s best for the country is what’s best for the industry. — Matthew Leising, editor in chief, Decential Media

Have you read the definitive history of Ethereum? No? Well then get your copy of Out of the Ether while you can.