By Ben Schiller, CoinDesk
Compiled by: Mensh, ChainCatcher
This year, the crypto industry finally got its own "friend", and his name is Donald Trump. For years, the industry has been trying to find a political spokesperson, someone who can guide its liberated thinking and bring its ideas to a wide audience. Now, that person is Trump.
He stood on stage at the Nashville Bitcoin Conference and said how much he loved people in crypto. He announced a strategic reserve of Bitcoin. He promised to free Ross Ulbricht. He handed out burgers at PubKey in New York. He even founded his own DeFi project, World Liberty Financial, and developed an internal management model (what better way to show his loyalty to crypto than this?)
Trump said what crypto wanted to hear and did what crypto wanted to do, and he attracted millions of dollars in donations. Loudmouths cheered him on, and culture warriors expressed hatred in performances. He occupied the political space that the Biden administration and Harris campaign could have occupied if they were not so subservient to the Warren wing. He said everything right because Trump always said what people wanted him to say. He fits the crypto party's goals perfectly because his politics can adapt to any situation, and the crypto party is in desperate need of a friend.
I have to admit that all of this makes me personally uncomfortable, not because I have any affection for Harris, but because Trump has long been a friend of unreasonableness. He could easily take a completely opposite view on crypto if it worked for him, and he has done so. I am concerned about crypto's embrace of Trump because I have a hard time believing that Trump is consistent with the principles that attracted me to crypto.
So what are three reasons we, as an industry, should be wary of?
Trump may not deliver on his promise
Many White House officials during Trump's first presidency have spoken of his unprincipled nature. His former chief of staff, John Kelly, said he fits the definition of a fascist: someone willing to overturn constitutional norms to achieve his own goals.
Here's what a former Trump White House official had to say this morning:
John Mitnick said: Trump is reckless, irritable, vindictive, narcissistic, and has no respect for the Constitution and the rule of law; Trump is not a conservative, he is more like a dictator and fascist driven by personal interests. He does not care about you and your family as he says, he only cares about himself.
Seriously, isn’t this something we should be concerned about? Isn’t it strange that crypto is being aligned with an unreliable person? Isn’t it strange that crypto, which is supposed to abhor single points of failure, is joining a cult of personality?
Trump must take the cryptocurrency issue personally to become a crypto politician. Harris and her team have occasionally approached cryptocurrencies over the past few months, indicating that they may play by the wayside on this issue. This summer, participants in Trump's dance with cryptocurrency made it clear that they would not deal with Democrats. Why?
Because Trump has to be that guy: He won’t share this issue with Democrats. That’s what happened in Nashville. Elon Musk was expected to speak with Trump at the Bitcoin conference. But when Trump didn’t want to share the stage with him, he walked away, according to an insider and CoinDesk’s tracking of Musk’s plane. Trump needs to be that guy.
To be sure, the Democrats themselves gave up on cryptocurrencies. It started with mining, and after the industry came back to the US, all the new plants went to red states. Democrats started making Bitcoin mining illegal as harmful to the environment, while Texas and other states are using it as part of their grid flexibility plans. Personally, I’m all for mining as part of the grid, and it would be foolish for the Democrats to outlaw it and lose the industry.
But the interesting question is how Trump would react if Democrats actually started to seriously support cryptocurrencies.
Alienating non-party members
In its quest for power and relevance, Crypto has aligned itself with the Republican Party. It doesn’t usually say this publicly, but it has done so. The people running its campaigns are all Republicans. The down-ballot candidates it favors are mostly Republicans. When groups like Stand With Crypto implor people to vote, you know they’re not going to support a vote for Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
These campaign groups don’t always make their preferences clear. But their allies do, and the effect is often exclusionary. Here, for example, is onetime Messari Ryan Selkis discussing his feelings about liberal white women today.
This is a free country, and Selkis can say whatever he wants. He may even think he’s brave for saying so. But, really, is this good for crypto? Is such language consistent with the goal of popularizing crypto? Wouldn’t liberal white women, and the other groups Ryan has been slandering 24/7 for the past six months, be disgusted? Wouldn’t they think that crypto is made up of big bad guys like Selkis? If you want to build a broad crypto movement, you don’t want to antagonize women.
Cryptocurrency will be tied to policies that have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies
When I first heard the term "single-issue voter" in relation to cryptocurrency earlier this year, I immediately thought "BS." How can you support a candidate or party on a single issue? That's not how electoral politics works. When you support someone like Trump, you support a broad range of policies by default.
So when crypto offers Trump $10 million to reinterpret the Howey Test, it is supporting (in no particular order, just a few Trump policies) a “peace deal” (aka capitulation) on Ukraine, mass deportations, opposition to abortion, and transgender rights. Is this what crypto wants, culturally and socially?
It’s better to be safe than sorry. The opposition to cryptocurrencies by the Biden administration and the SEC over the past three years has been bad for the crypto industry, and the crypto industry must respond. However, if this election is aligned with a man named Trump, it could bring a whole new, different, and currently unforeseeable set of bad things.
