Crypto could get boost from younger, tech-savvy Harris administration 

The campaign of United States presidential candidate and sitting Vice President Kamala Harris has given several signals that her administration would benefit the crypto industry.

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

Would a Harris presidency include younger advisers and political appointees who are more open to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology — unlike the old guard of Biden, Yellen and Gensler?

Would it favor fair and balanced crypto reform legislation?

Would it do a better job for crypto users and innovators than the Republican Party — even though Donald Trump says he wants to be the “crypto president” and pledged to terminate US Securities Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler (a crypto bête noire) on “day one” of his new administration?

Elsewhere, a  “Crypto for Harris” online Town Hall is scheduled for Wednesday evening with a lineup that includes Mark Cuban, Anthony Scaramucci and “others determined not to let former President Trump run away with the crypto vote this fall,” according to Fox Business.

In the past week, even prediction markets have turned toward favoring the Democratic Party contender. 

Harris and Walz are both “pragmatists”

It would be premature to draw any firm conclusions about what a Harris administration might mean for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in the US, but some clues are offered by the backgrounds, political tendencies and age, as well as the campaign advisers selected by Harris’ and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Harris and Walz are both “pragmatists,” a former adviser to President Joe Biden, Moe Vela, told Cointelegraph. “They build consensus and are able to reach across the aisle,” he added. Most believe bipartisanship will be crucial for passing crypto reform legislation. 

“We need that balanced perspective” — not the antagonistic perspective that the Biden administration sometimes brought, he added.

Moreover, the candidates are younger. Vela anticipates “a fresh perspective toward crypto.”

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

Together, Harris and Walz have a “more modern, relevant perspective, almost an Obama approach,” according to Vela, now a senior adviser to Unicoin, an asset-backed cryptocurrency.

“I am hopeful that a Kamala Harris presidency will be pro-crypto,” Boris Bohrer-Bilowitzki, CEO at Concordium, a layer-1 blockchain, told Cointelegraph, adding:

“She is already surrounding herself with the right people, such as David Plouffe, a former Binance adviser. She is also very close with Silicon Valley.”

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

Harris and Walz are almost two decades younger than Trump. “Crypto skews younger,” noted Vela. Users tend to be a little more “hip” and more open-minded when it comes to financial innovation.  

Don’t expect “miracles” for crypto industry

What sort of concrete steps might one expect from a Harris-Walz administration? 

“Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results in financial markets or policy,” but using the Biden-Harris administration as a guide, “one should not expect miracles on the crypto reform front from a Harris-Walz administration,” Jack Solowey, a fintech policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, told Cointelegraph, adding: 

“That said, improvement over the Biden-Harris administration is a low bar.”

In any event, Solowey would also like to see “some firm public statements from the Harris-Walz campaign about their crypto policy positions, which so far have been lacking.”

Vela, for his part, believes that balanced and fair crypto reform legislation can be achieved during a Harris presidency, but the industry has to do its part, too. 

Vela said the crypto sector has taken a “discombobulated approach” toward crypto reform regulation. There are multiple blockchain associations, for instance. Companies like Coinbase are also “doing their own thing” with regard to lobbying and regulation. “As a sector, we should be coming together.” 

Should President Harris terminate SEC Chair Gensler on “day one,” as Trump says he’d do, for instance?

That sort of remedy sounds good, Vela answered, “but that’s not how it works.” 

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

There’s no question that Gensler incites strong feelings within the crypto community. “The reality is that Gensler has politicized the agency, which is a big problem,” said Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation.

Still, the SEC chair might not survive even under a future Democratic administration “because the reality, and the thing I think people in crypto miss, is that Gary Gensler is not popular among a broad variety of industry actors, not just crypto,” added Warren. 

A party divided?

Complicating matters more, “Democrats are divided on crypto,” Aaron Klein, Miriam K. Carliner chair and senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told Cointelegraph, “with a substantial wing of elected officials deeply skeptical while many Democratic voters own and support crypto.” 

The Republican presidential candidate has seized on this, noted Klein, adding:

“Trump is campaigning as pro-crypto even though when he was president, his administration did little to support the industry.” 

Perhaps the best way for candidate Harris to approach the crypto issue, then, would be “to straddle the line, offering enough to crypto supporters to differentiate herself from the Biden administration while leaving enough ambiguity to define her administration after the election,” said Klein.

It’s entirely possible that Trump, for his part, could at some point become disenchanted with cryptocurrencies again. Klein recalled that in 2016, Trump campaigned “on a platform to reinstate on banks the highly regulatory Glass-Steagall Act, only to deregulate banks once in office.”

Three legs of effective regulation

Many unknowns remain, though, and Solowey is still waiting “to see definitive public statements of principle on crypto and decentralized finance from the Harris-Walz campaign, let alone stances on a regulatory agenda or crypto-related legislation.” Maybe that will change in the coming days and weeks, he said. 

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If a new Harris administration ever does get a chance to pass federal crypto reform legislation, it needs to be careful, though. 

“Democrats tend to over-regulate,” observed Vela, former chief financial officer, director of management, and senior adviser on Latino and LGBT policy to Vice President Al Gore and Vice President Joe Biden. 

He added that effective regulation rests on three legs: It must promote innovation and growth, be pro-business and pro-consumer and weed out the bad actors. 

“None of these would hurt our industry” if done properly, Vela concluded.