How Democrats Have Shifted on Crypto

There’s nothing quite like a political convention. The pageantry of patriotic songs and speeches. The cavalcade of speeches by party leaders. And, of course, the thousands of balloons dropping like snow on the newly nominated presidential candidate.

Yet, for crypto, August’s Democratic National Convention was an especially auspicious one. Despite the open hostility of parts of the Biden Administration, crypto was for the first time a welcomed participant. It makes sense: crypto owners now comprise about 20 percent of all registered Democratic voters, according to a Paradigm poll of Democratic voters a few days before the convention. There is severe electoral risk if some of these Democrats deflect to the Republican ticket in a race that could be won in the margins. Considering that the Republicans have openly and aggressively courted crypto, crypto’s coming out at the DNC signaled that the industry was, finally, beginning to have a truly bipartisan hue. Those on the ground in Chicago got to see this blossoming of Democratic interest first hand.

While most of the crypto-focused conversations were offstage, there was a hint of crypto’s growing importance in the main convention hall too. Young pro-crypto members of Congress and candidates for Congress like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D.-TX) and congressional candidate Shomari Figures of Alabama both received significant speaking slots. Some crypto companies also hosted policymakers for discussions off the convention floor, as other companies and organizations have done for decades. Vice President Harris herself stressed the importance of building an “Opportunity Economy” in her keynote, with a special grace note praising the role of Founders in making America prosperous.

This was just the proverbial tip of the political iceberg, though. It’s easy to forget when you’re watching convention programming during primetime, but political conventions are much more than a few hours of short speeches and slick videos. Conventions are, at base, about letting members of a political party agglomerate in one physical space every few years, both for socialization and for strategizing.

As part of this communal process, the week was filled with panels, meetings, and even press interviews, all of which are designed to help the party build consensus on its policy views, goals, and even beliefs. These are the interstitial material that truly comprises our decentralized political parties. And it’s here that crypto really got to make its voice heard.

Over the week, there were panels on the basics of how crypto works and how Democrats can work to rectify the party’s strained relationship with crypto. There were discussions about the importance of maintaining the hegemony of the dollar and the role of stablecoins. And there were frequent coffee and water cooler discussions with dozens of policymakers about how they can appeal to crypto owners.

During chats that week with a host of different policymakers and opinion leaders, we were most struck not by the statements of crypto supportive policymakers, but the skeptics. Even some ardent crypto skeptics said the current enforcement-only approach at the SEC wasn’t working, and that there was a need for legislation. As two people who have been calling for reasonable legislation for years, this was music to our ears.

The other part that was especially notable was just how normal it was. Policymakers were curious about crypto, both how it worked and its involvement in this year’s elections. But this curiosity was not hedged with the upturned nose that accompanied some discussions about crypto in DC even last year. Instead, we were seen as just another young and novel industry, one that policymakers were trying to grok.

The Harris campaign underscored this banal normality when it made news of its “support” for crypto’s growth in a press interview with the campaign’s policy director, Brian Nelson. Despite some anxiety about Nelson’s view of crypto given his recent role as Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Nelson announced on the third day of the DNC that a Harris Administration would “support” the growth of crypto in America. The statement was remarkable given how much a political war has been waged on crypto, and unremarkable for how basic it was. Why wouldn’t an American president want an industry to stay headquartered in America?

The Harris campaign has since released its platform, which has emphasis on entrepreneurs, small businesses, and American innovators. While crypto and other technologies are not mentioned by name, the rhetoric and tone used in the platform differs significantly from that of the Biden administration. Since the DNC, both of us have continued to meet with policymakers and candidates from across the political spectrum, and what is remarkable is how similar most conversations are, whether with Democrats or Republicans down the ballot.

Policymakers are tired of (and in some cases, shocked by) the SEC’s approach under Chair Gensler. They want to preserve and promote American national security and economic interests. And, by and large, they are deeply concerned about inadvertently ceding technological advantages to other jurisdictions, as happened with semiconductors.

More than anything else, an overarching feeling of simple acceptance for crypto pervaded Chicago. There are still many miles to go for the Democrats to actually find workable solutions for how they want to regulate crypto, but the first step to building something is to commit to doing it. We were pleased to see Vice President Harris acknowledge recently that digital assets technologies need to be encouraged; while we may not have a schematic for how Democrats will execute a reset with crypto, both the DNC and recent Crypto4Harris event showed that Democrats across the ticket no longer question as a default whether crypto has a right to exist. That’s progress worth celebrating with a balloon drop.

Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.