Cash News
Days after a leading crypto industry figure endorsed her, Vice President Kamala Harris gave cryptocurrencies a vague embrace this week — as part of a pitch to Black men.
Along with a pledge to legalize weed, the policy document released by Harris’s campaign Monday made a bid for Black men’s votes with ambiguous wording about regulating crypto. The move left industry critics wondering whether she backs strong or weak safeguards at a time when the industry is pouring money into political races.
“What she is doing is reflecting the will of some of her funders.”
While the crypto industry has spread its money around — spending more than $200 million on the congressional campaigns of friendly candidates from both parties — leading crypto figures have mostly backed former President Donald Trump. The preference is largely seen as a rebuke of the Biden administration’s willingness to regulate the scandal-plagued sector.
Crypto skeptics were divided on how to interpret Harris’s comments, with one saying that they seemed to be aimed as much at donors as voters.
“What she is doing is reflecting the will of some of her funders,” said Jared Ball, a professor of communication and Africana/Black studies at Morgan State University, “which is to get some policy support to give engagement in crypto trading more legitimacy, which is just going to help fleece more people.”
Courting Crypto
Since entering the race in July, Harris has courted business leaders who took a dour view of the Biden administration thanks to its enforcement of antitrust and securities laws.
That cohort includes the Silicon Valley venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who announced their support for Trump days before Biden dropped out of the race. Their firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested billions of dollars in cryptocurrency, moves that coincided with scrutiny of crypto by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Once a critic, Trump has turned into a crypto booster since launching his campaign. At a crypto conference in July, Trump said the industry’s regulations would be “written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.” More recently, he’s been shilling a cryptocurrency of his own.
Harris has been far more circumspect. Behind the scenes, however, she has engaged with industry insiders.
In an October 4 post on X, Horowitz, a longtime friend of Harris’s, said he had had “several conversations” with Harris and her advisers. Saying he was “encouraged” by the discussions, Horowitz announced that he was making a large donation to the Harris campaign.
“As we stated earlier, the Biden Administration has been exceptionally destructive on tech policy across the industry, but especially as it relates to Crypto/Blockchain and AI,” Horowitz said. “So, while I am very hopeful that the Harris Administration will be much better, they have not yet stated their intentions.”
The Agenda
Harris had already made some encouraging comments about cryptocurrencies before Horowitz made his tweet. Within two weeks of their meeting coming to light, however, she rolled out her most direct statement on the issue in a policy paper on helping Black men.
Losing ground among Black men to Trump in the polls, Harris has ramped up her direct appeals. Her nine-page “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” included conventional-sounding ideas, such as $20,000 forgivable loans for entrepreneurs and expanded apprenticeship programs.
The most attention-grabbing sections, however, called for legalizing recreational marijuana and, finally, making it easier for Black men who own crypto “to benefit from financial innovation.”
The paper said that Harris “will make sure owners of and investors in digital assets benefit from a regulatory framework so that Black men and others who participate in this market are protected.”
Surveys suggest that Black Americans, wary or shut out of traditional financial institutions, have invested in cryptocurrencies at higher rates than other Americans. Critics say that has left Black people more vulnerable to fluctuations in the volatile crypto market.
Since releasing the policy document, Harris has not elaborated on what sort of “regulatory framework” she would like to see. Rick Claypool, the research director for Public Citizen’s president’s office, said the statement was “a bit of a Rorschach.”
The industry has long said that it supports regulations, just weak ones enforced by the short-staffed Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Meanwhile, critics who liken the industry to a giant Ponzi scheme say that existing regulations enforced by the SEC are appropriate.
“Black Capitalism”?
Mark Hays, a senior policy analyst with Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress, said his “overarching concern” was that the industry would secure lax oversight under the guise of regulatory clarity: “a wolf in sheep’s clothing thing.”
The Harris campaign did not comment on whether she supports regulation under the CFTC or the SEC.
“The specific role that crypto has played in this discussion has just been to refurbish those old claims.”
Leaving aside that question, Ball, the Morgan State professor, said his larger concern was the document’s suggestion that “Black capitalism” could close the racial wealth gap.
“The specific role that crypto has played in this discussion has just been to refurbish those old claims and give them new packaging,” Ball said.
Still, at least one industry critic said he saw signs for hope in the Harris campaign document.
“I have written that no one should be in crypto,” said Algernon Austin, the director for race and economic justice at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “But given that people are, definitely more regulation, more transparency, more safeguards would be an improvement.”