For the first time in history, Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency community at large could play a pivotal role in a U.S. presidential election. Although November 2024 is over a year away, campaigns are already in full swing and, like it or not, Bitcoin is on the ballot. The fact that many candidates feel compelled to take a stance on “crypto” is a testament to the uniqueness of the moment.
On the Republican side, several major candidates – Governor Ron DeSantis, Mayor Francis Suarez, and Vivek Ramaswamy – are proponents of Bitcoin, celebrating the technology’s tenets of freedom, privacy, and decentralization. DeSantis has also come out against a U.S. central bank digital currency (or “digital dollar”), signaling his commitment to decentralization and data privacy.
This story is part of CoinDesk’s 2023 Mining Week, sponsored by Foundry. Kyle Schneps is the director of public policy at Foundry.
For the Democrats, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to support the rights of all Americans to use, custody, and mine Bitcoin without undue prejudicial government scrutiny. And, while Elizabeth Warren has vowed to build an “anti-crypto army,” she at least knows that crypto is a topic to be reckoned with, albeit in a negative sense.
Even former President Donald J. Trump – the Republican frontrunner and longtime Bitcoin skeptic – remains uncharacteristically silent on the issue. Clearly, a political shift is underway, begging the question: if Bitcoin was a non-factor in previous general elections, why is this time different?
Indeed, the growth of the crypto industry and the sheer number of investors in the United States is reaching levels hard to ignore. The U.S. Federal Reserve estimates that 8%-11% of Americans – certainly enough to sway an election – own cryptocurrencies depending on the relative timing of the bull/bear market cycle. This number will likely increase dramatically given the recent pivot by BlackRock, Vanguard, and other major financial institutions to invest in Bitcoin (BlackRock recently applied to the SEC to form a Bitcoin ETF, long seen as a key vehicle for more mainstream acceptance).
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Moreover, according to a Plaid survey, 46% of Black Americans and 44% of Hispanic Americans view…
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