Candidate Harris Unlikely to Make Full-Throated Crypto Policy Before Election: Source

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The presidential campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris made crypto waves with a brief comment about the sector over the weekend, but the industry shouldn’t expect much more in the final weeks before the U.S. elections, insiders suggest.
Harris was deliberately broad when she said her presidency would “encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting consumers and investors,” according to a person with knowledge of the talks between her campaign and crypto insiders. Because the discussions about digital assets policy remain high-level and aren’t likely to produce a detailed stance before voters decide who to elect, the person said, this likely leaves crypto as just one item among a range of economic innovations Harris will cite on the campaign trail.
Senior Harris campaign officials have kept a dialogue running with a narrow group of industry executives and insiders, including from Ripple Labs and Coinbase Inc., said multiple people familiar with the discussions. Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, is among those who’ve sat down for campaign meetings.
“The progress is real,” he said in a Monday interview with CoinDesk. He said it’s remarkable to see how far the Democratic candidate – and also her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump – have come in just a matter of weeks.
“All we want are sensible rules, and we’ll follow them,” said Grewal, who has helped lead the company’s multi-front legal battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He said he’s “encouraged” at the response from the Harris campaign.
“Their understanding of what the industry and crypto investors alike need from a Harris administration, should one come to pass, is growing in sophistication and depth,” Grewal said, though the actual policy choices may not be seen for a while. “Sometimes things just take a little bit longer than any of us might like,” he said.
Grewal suggested the crypto discussions with both the Harris and Trump campaigns are happening on a frequent basis. Ripple declined to comment on the talks, but others at the table cautioned realism from industry folks awaiting every utterance from the Harris campaign that only began two months ago – including from adviser Brian Nelson, who had been well-versed in crypto as the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
“It’s not as if the campaigns have the luxury to develop fully thought-out, complete approaches to regulating crypto any more than they do any other industry,” Grewal said. “It’s just not practical or realistic to expect that.”
Former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, said at a recent event that he’s among those working with the Harris campaign on its crypto policy stance.
The vice president’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on its crypto-policy strategy.
Harris’ supportive tone in her first mention of the technology echoes President Joe Biden’s earlier position on crypto, when his famous executive order suggested the White House would support technological advances and U.S. competitiveness as long as crypto developments didn’t harm consumers. That March 2022 order, though, was before the collapse of FTX and several other high-profile digital assets businesses, and U.S. financial regulators moved to partially wall off the banking system from crypto and pursue dozens of legal actions.
The vice president’s campaign intended her weekend remark to show that crypto enthusiasts have been heard on their hopes for a U.S. reset, according to the person with knowledge of the campaign discussions. The political calculus may not allow for much more than a rhetorical wink, since Harris can’t know yet who will be steering the chambers of Congress if she wins and may need room to strategize on legislation.
For his part, Trump’s rhetoric is now all-in on crypto after years of skepticism, and one of his family’s latest business pursuits is in decentralized finance (DeFi), though the early information on the Trumps’ World Liberty Financial has drawn some critics among crypto advocates. He’s lending his support to the crypto business from the campaign trail while also pushing for pro-digital assets policies in a potential second Trump administration, which he said would ensure that the U.S. become the “world capital for crypto.”
Polling paid for by the industry has indicated that cryptocurrency considerations could figure into voting preferences for some.
“I think the crypto voter is speaking loud and clear in this race, and so campaigns are naturally oriented to the voices they think are going to matter most and turn out in the largest numbers come November,” Grewal said.
Read More: Ripple Co-Founder Among Kamala Harris’ New Corporate Endorsers
Edited by Nikhilesh De.
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Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk’s deputy managing editor for global policy and regulation. He doesn’t hold any crypto.