The Harris Era: A New Dawn for the Crypto Industry?

Original author: Andrew Singer

Original translation: BitpushNews an

The campaign of current U.S. Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris has sent several signals that her administration would be favorable to the cryptocurrency industry.

As Harris continues to climb in the polls, industry observers are beginning to ask more questions.

Would a Harris presidency include younger advisors and political appointees who are more open to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, as opposed to the old guard like Biden, Yellen, and Gensler?

Will it support fair and balanced cryptocurrency reform legislation?

Will it serve cryptocurrency users and innovators better than the Republican Party — even though Donald Trump has said he wants to be the “crypto president” and promised to fire SEC Chairman Gary Gensler (a crypto nemesis) on “day one” of his new administration?

Elsewhere, an online town hall event titled Harris for Crypto is planned for Wednesday evening, with a lineup that includes Mark Cuban, Anthony Scaramucci, and others who are determined not to give former President Trump an easy win in the cryptocurrency polls this fall, according to Fox Business.

Even the prediction markets have begun to tilt in favor of the Democratic candidate over the past week.

Harris and Waltz are both pragmatists

It’s too early to draw any firm conclusions about what a Harris administration might mean for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in the United States, but the backgrounds, political leanings, ages of Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz, and their choice of campaign advisers offer some clues.

Both Harris and Waltz are “pragmatic,” Mo Vera, a former adviser to President Joe Biden, told Cointelegraph. “They build consensus and are able to reach across party lines,” he added. Most believe that bipartisanship is essential to passing cryptocurrency reform legislation.

We need that balanced view — not the confrontational view that the Biden administration sometimes brings, he added.

In addition, the two candidates are younger. Vera expects there will be a fresh perspective on cryptocurrencies.

Harris grew up in Northern California, not far from Silicon Valley. “She has a lot of experience with technology.”

Harris and Waltz share a “more modern, more relevant view, almost an Obama-esque one,” said Vera, who is now a senior adviser to Unicoin, an asset-backed cryptocurrency.

“I am optimistic about Kamala Harris’ presidency and that she will support cryptocurrencies,” Concordium CEO Boris Bohr-Bilowitsky told Cointelegraph. He added:

“She’s already hanging out with the right people, like David Plouffe, the former Binance advisor. She’s also got really strong connections in Silicon Valley.”

They brought in not only Plouffe but also Gene Sperling, a former Ripple Labs board member. “They’re crypto experts,” Vera said. “That says a lot.”

Harris and Waltz are nearly two decades younger than Trump. “The cryptocurrency user base tends to be younger,” Vera noted. They tend to be more “hip” and open to financial innovation.

Don’t expect a miracle to happen

What specific actions can people expect from a Harris-Waltz administration?

“Past performance is no guarantee of future outcomes in financial markets or policy,” Jack Solovey, a fintech policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center on Monetary and Financial Alternatives, told Cointelegraph, adding:

That being said, improvement is a low bar compared to what would be achieved under a Biden-Harris administration.

Solovey also wants to see “firm public statements from the Harris-Waltz campaign about their crypto policy stance, which has been lacking so far.”

Vera believes balanced and fair cryptocurrency reform legislation can be achieved under a Harris presidency, but the industry itself must also do its part.

Vera said the crypto industry has taken a chaotic approach to cryptocurrency regulation reform. For example, there are multiple blockchain associations. Companies like Coinbase are also doing their own thing when it comes to lobbying and regulation. As an industry, we should come together.

So should Harris fire SEC Chairman Gensler on his first day in office?

This remedy may sound good, but Vera responded, But it is not.

The SEC is an independent government agency, and “the president does not have the power to remove the SEC chairman without cause,” as Tonya Evans recently wrote in Fortune. This may eventually be managed, but it won’t be easy, and it certainly won’t be done “on day one.”

There’s no doubt that Gensler has stirred strong emotions within the cryptocurrency community. “The reality is that Gensler has politicized the institution, and that’s a big problem,” said Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Innovation Council.

Still, even under a future Democratic administration, the SEC chairman might not survive “because the reality, and something that I think people in the crypto space overlook, is that Gary Gensler is not popular among a broad range of industry participants, not just in the crypto space,” Warren added.

Disagreement within the party?

Further complicating the issue, “the Democratic Party is divided on cryptocurrency,” Aaron Klein, Miriam K. Carliner Chair and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Economic Studies Department, told Cointelegraph. “On one hand, there is a significant portion of elected officials who are deeply skeptical, while many Democratic voters own and support cryptocurrency.”

Klein noted that Republican presidential candidates have already grasped this, adding:

“Trump even campaigned on a pro-crypto image, even though his administration showed little support for the industry during his presidency.”

Perhaps the best way for a Harris candidate to approach the cryptocurrency issue would be to “walk a middle path, offering enough to cryptocurrency supporters to differentiate it from a Biden administration while retaining enough ambiguity to define her administration after the election,” Klein said.

It’s entirely possible that Trump will become disillusioned with cryptocurrencies again at some point. Klein recalled that in 2016, Trump ran on a platform of “restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, which highly regulated banks,” “but once in office, he deregulated the banks.”

Three pillars of effective regulation

Still, there are many unknowns, and Solovey is still waiting for “a clear public statement of principles from the Harris-Waltz campaign on cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance, let alone a position on a regulatory agenda or crypto-related legislation.” Perhaps that will change in the coming days and weeks, he said. If the new Harris administration does have a chance to pass federal cryptocurrency reform legislation, it needs to tread carefully.

“Democrats tend to over-regulate,” commented Villa, a former chief financial officer, management executive, and senior adviser to Vice Presidents Al Gore and Biden on Latino and LGBT policy.

He added that effective regulation rests on three pillars: it must promote innovation and growth, support business and consumers, and weed out bad actors.

“None of this will harm our industry if done properly,” Vera concluded.

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