Crypto for Kamala: $100K fundraiser planned for VP amid friendlier stance Share
Cryptocurrency Sep 3, 2024Although many expect the current United States Vice President and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris to continue the anti-cryptocurrency stance of the incumbent President, Joe Biden, it seems that animosities are going down, as evident in the planned fundraiser by certain members of the crypto community.
Specifically, crypto investors and industry executives calling on Harris to pursue a softer regulatory stance on the crypto sector are planning to raise over $100,000 for her at a September 13 Washington fundraiser, according to a Reuters report published on August 30.
Why (some) crypto execs support Harris
As Cleve Mesidor, executive director of the Blockchain Foundation and one of the fundraiser organizers alongside Tiffany Smith, co-chair of the Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Working Group at law firm WilmerHale, and Rahilla Zafar, a crypto founder with experience in artificial intelligence (AI), explained:
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“Why not seize on the first fundraiser — which there will be many others — to actually make a statement about what crypto is for Democrats as a potentially new administration contemplates how do they look at this?”
Furthermore, Mesidor said the tickets for the event would range between $500 and $5,000 and added that she hoped it would stir conversations regarding potential Harris administration’s ways to encourage crypto innovation and provide more people of color with access to capital.
As a reminder, earlier in August, another group emerged calling itself Crypto4Harris, which also announced plans to organize fundraisers for the VP, having held a town hall during which billionaire Mark Cuban and Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci spoke in Harris’s favor.
How Harris feels about crypto
Meanwhile, Harris is yet to take a public stance on crypto, although her campaign staff has met with the likes of blockchain company Ripple and Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), one of the largest crypto exchanges, and Brian Nelson, senior advisor for policy for the Harris campaign recently stated that:
“She’s going to support policies that ensure that emerging technologies and that sort of industry can continue to grow.”
Indeed, during a North Carolina campaign event, Harris vowed she would “focus on cutting needless bureaucracy and unnecessary regulatory red tape” and encourage “innovative technologies while protecting consumers and creating a stable business environment with consistent and transparent rules of the road.”
On the other hand, Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson believes her victory would usher in “a bleak and dystopian America with state-sponsored censorship, mega-corporations running all U.S. policy, the death of the American cryptocurrency industry, and endless wars.”
Ultimately, the VP’s views on crypto are still largely a mystery, although, if some of her aides are correct, she might, indeed, take a softer approach to the industry than Biden, and only time will tell whether her policies would be more open than those promised by her rival, Donald Trump.
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