Billionaire Mark Cuban, Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci and Congressman Adam Schiff joined a group of cryptocurrency advocates urging Kamala Harris to reset the Democratic party’s policy on digital assets ahead of the November election. On Wednesday night, the new Crypto4Harris group held its first virtual meeting to discuss how to support the vice president’s election campaign, while calling on Harris to end the Biden administration’s crackdown on the cryptocurrency industry.
In a sign of the urgency with which the cryptocurrency issue has become an election issue for Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer appeared and expressed his desire to pass a cryptocurrency bill this year, without elaborating.
‘We can’t afford to stay on the sidelines any longer because then we run the risk of cryptocurrencies going overseas,’ he said.
The group also announced plans for a nationwide fundraiser in September to support Harris.
‘The main goal of everything we’re doing is to completely reset the policy on cryptocurrencies and blockchain,’ Jonathan Padilla, chief executive of blockchain startup Snickerdoodle Labs and one of the group’s organisers, told Reuters ahead of the meeting.
Crypto4Harris has initiated ‘early engagement’ with the Harris campaign and plans to develop a list of potential cryptocurrency-friendly candidates for regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), should Harris win, it added.
The group is not affiliated with Harris’ campaign, which has yet to take a position on cryptocurrencies and declined to comment for this story.
Crypto4Harris is part of a growing effort by Democrats and others in the crypto industry to push for nonpartisanship rather than support Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has courted cryptocurrency donors with promises of friendly policies. The effort also suggests some cryptocurrencies are hedging their bets as Harris gains ground on Trump in some polls.
‘There’s a real opportunity to open up this issue and take it back from the Republican side,’ said Rashan Colbert, head of policy at cryptocurrency exchange dYdX and a member of Crypto4Harris.
At the town hall, Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital, urged lawmakers to ‘make cryptocurrency regulation positive and bipartisan’. In a statement to Reuters ahead of the meeting, he said the Harris campaign was open-minded about digital assets.
Under Biden, the SEC has taken multiple enforcement actions on cryptocurrencies, arguing that crypto tokens and their operators are subject to securities laws. The industry disputes this and wants new rules to encourage the technology.
a number of Democratic lawmakers last month signalled to the Democratic National Committee their concern that the SEC’s stance has alienated some voters, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
Harris’s campaign staff have met with prominent cryptocurrency companies, including Coinbase and Ripple, since she became the presumptive Democratic nominee last month, three people familiar with the matter said. While those discussions were not substantive, two of the sources said they were optimistic that the Harris campaign could signal an openness to tech innovation.
At next week’s DNC convention, tech groups are also hosting a panel on digital assets that will feature lawmakers and other industry executives, according to two separate sources. While not part of the official agenda, the panel could provide a venue for Democrats to develop clearer crypto policies, one of them said.