Author: Emily Nicolle, Bloomberg; Translated by: Baishui, Golden Finance
The lonely left
With Donald Trump making positive noises about digital assets, digital asset investors are ecstatic about the prospect of a pro-crypto president in the U.S. As a result, the industry’s tolerance for political diversity appears to be waning.
The crypto industry is generally supportive of Trump’s November White House bid, with everyone from executives to day traders backing the Republican administration. The excitement reached a crescendo on Saturday when Trump spoke at a bitcoin-themed conference in Nashville, revealing his campaign promise to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the earth.”
Crypto’s loudest voices in the Trump camp include Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, BitGo boss Mike Belshe, Messari founder Ryan Selkis, and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Yet support for the other side of the aisle is far fewer in the industry — at least in part because expressing such views can invite cyberattacks.
“Crypto people who defected to the Democratic Party this year are traitors,” Selkis wrote in a post on X on Monday. He resigned as CEO of Messari earlier this month following growing criticism over the intensity of his rhetoric on the election.
Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz faced backlash for a social media post in which he endorsed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, whose campaign has yet to take a stance on cryptocurrencies. Calls for neutrality were also strongly condemned, and even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was strongly condemned after he urged investors in a blog post to remember that there are other issues to consider when voting.
For some, Trump’s policies on issues like immigration make supporting his campaign pointless. “Regardless of what his campaign thinks about tech or crypto, there are things that matter more to me,” Marvin Ammori, chief legal officer at decentralized exchange Uniswap, wrote in a July 19 X post.
But given the Biden administration’s crackdown on the cryptocurrency industry, it’s hard for Trump-supporting industry players to fathom siding with the left. In Nashville, Trump drew the loudest cheers of the night by promising to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, who was caught off guard by the vitriol directed at the regulator. “I didn’t know he was so unpopular,” Trump joked.
Before this election, few issues have so thoroughly divided the cryptocurrency community. As the November vote approaches, the industry’s “we’re in this together” mentality has all but vanished, and it looks unlikely to return anytime soon.
Chart: Crypto VC funding recovers as markets rebound
“He fell in love with the crowd: young, ambitious, unregulated. Someone asked him, ‘What do you think of crypto?’ He said, ‘I like it, and I don’t like it all going overseas.’ Of course, the crowd went wild.”
