A rumor swept like wildfire across the crypto world's social media accounts this week: the Democratic party's new standard bearer, Kamala Harris, was "in talks" with the organizers of Bitcoin 2024 to address the annual industry conference, where her rival Donald Trump is slated to speak. “They’re making up their minds today,” organizer David Bailey, tweeted on Tuesday afternoon.
Harris had been the Democrats' presumed Presidential nominee for all of a few days, and her team has only begun putting together a campaign schedule—so the chances of her attending a Bitcoin gathering in Nashville on short notice seemed improbable. Nonetheless, when the campaign confirmed she could not attend, the conference treated the news with indignation. "No surprise...…it would have been a disaster for her," Bailey wrote on X.
Sources close to the matter, however, told Fortune that the Harris team had in fact given the invitation serious consideration. This in itself is news. That the nominee for the Democratic party, whose leadership has been implacably hostile to crypto, was in "talks" to address 30,000 Bitcoiners, reflects just how much policy could shift under Harris.
Kamala Harris will not be speaking @TheBitcoinConf. No surprise. What can she say to us when she’s actively imprisoning developers, forcing our industry overseas, attacking PoW… it would have been a disaster for her.
— David Bailey🇵🇷 $0.65mm/btc is the floor (@DavidFBailey) July 24, 2024
All eyes on Trump now.
'She doesn't have a lot of time to redefine herself'
The industry now waits to see if Harris, who has a relatively blank slate when it comes to crypto, could win back some of the crypto voters who are pledging support for Donald Trump in light of his commitment to be a “crypto president.” Meanwhile, some in her own party are already pressing her to adopt a more favorable position. So, when can we expect to hear?
“She doesn't have a lot of time to redefine herself. She has a very short window to kind of definitively say that she's her own person,” says one crypto lobbyist and former White House advisor, who spoke to Fortune on the condition of anonymity. He estimates Harris will make her views on crypto clear within the next few weeks. Crypto “is not a bad issue to throw in with a few others as a way to say, hey, that was Biden's administration—my vision is going to be different. I'm more embracing of tech and innovation,” he added.
Gary DeWaal, a former senior trial attorney at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), told Fortune he doesn’t expect Harris to comment on crypto before August 7, when she will announce her pick for vice president. “That’s her priority now,” he said.
Where could Harris stand on crypto?
The very act of the Harris team mulling over Bitcoin 2024 is itself a wordless statement on crypto; President Joe Biden’s campaign would have offered an automatic rejection. His administration has been stubborn to pass regulation in Congress, and enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission against crypto firms have shot up under Chairman Gary Gensler.
For starters, when Biden became president, many of his economic advisors were former colleagues of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a staunch crypto critic. Harris does not have the same connections. The crypto lobbyist shared that Harris' tech advisor is believed to be pro-crypto, and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, is a "crypto guy." He added: "I expect that she'll shift."
In one potentially promising sign, businessman and Bitcoin enthusiast Mark Cuban this week told Decrypt that he's received multiple questions from the Harris camp about crypto.
And Harris fostering a more open-minded stance on crypto and blockchain technology compared to Biden would be consistent with her career representing California in the U.S. Senate, where she regularly advocated for Silicon Valley. In public office, “[she] developed good relations with tech industry leaders,” DeWaal added. Among them are executives like Meta’s Sheryl Sandberg, whom she cultivated a close relationship with, leading to a reputation as a pro-business politician.
All of this might lead the crypto industry to hope Harris will turn the page on her predecessor's hard line. But for now, at least, all they have is only that: hope.
