Crypto is making a splash in U.S. elections — but chiefly in jabs about industry influence Boosters often say crypto voters can swing elections, but Democrats are seeking mileage out of tying crypto to Trump, corruption and attempts to buy seats in Congress. – The crypto…
dustry’s campaign spending doesn’t make ads that mention crypto, so the main place the topic has come up in the elections is as a political weapon wielded by Democrats bashing the sector and its ties to President Donald Trump. – Candidates such as former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown and incumbent Virginia Senator Mark Warner are flagging the industry’s outsized political spending and close relationship with the president. Crypto is finally being talked about in U.S. political campaigns, but it’s certainly not in a light that the industry would choose
Though digital assets advocates have long referenced a grassroots uprising of crypto-focused voters that can swing elections, the industry’s own massive campaign spending has carefully decided against even mentioning the financial technology in the ads it buys for favored candidates. But crypto is having a moment in the midterms, anyway, as the sector’s critics paint its political involvement as a venal influence on congressional campaigning. A number of Democratic candidates have raised crypto as a black mark to suggest improper corporate sway over their political adversaries and more generally as a factor in corruption accusations against President Donald Trump and his administration.
In this environment, in which voters are now weighing government corruption as a top political concern, it may carry consequential weight. In a current campaign ad from Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat seeks to tarnish Trump and his allies by highlighting the billions Trump has made in office and the jet he accepted as a gift from Qatar. The ad also notes that Trump made hundreds of millions of dollars off of his “crypto memecoin,”…