Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), majority leader in the U.S. Senate, speaking during a digital town hall meeting on Wednesday, vowed to pass crypto legislation by the end of the year.
“I believe Washington cannot just look away from crypto, stick our heads in the sand, and do nothing,” Schumer said during the Crypto4Harris livestream. “My goal is to get something passed out of the Senate and into law by the end of the year, and I believe we can make that happen.”
Failing to act, he explained, would “risk crypto going overseas to lowest common denominator countries where there'll be no regulation at all,” Sen. Schumer said.”I think we should strike a balance for crypto between promoting innovation and providing common sense guardrails.”
The 90-minute livestream featured a mix of industry professionals, members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as state governors, and candidates for office. While several participants spoke live, many submitted pre-recorded remarks.
The running theme of the event was to achieve a “reset” with Vice President Kamala Harris and a future Harris administration—and stressing that the crypto space does not belong to one party.
“I know I speak for a lot of my friends and colleagues in this field, and in our industry, we want to make cryptocurrency regulation positive and bipartisan,” said investor Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of crypto-focused investment firm SkyBridge Capital.
“We keep this less tribal; we make it about the great things that can happen for the industry if we can get a bipartisan commitment to crypto regulation,” he added.
Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-NC) agreed.
“Digital assets and blockchain technology, it's not a partisan issue,” Nickel said. “Turning this into a political football is only going to set us back just decades in Congress, so that's been my focus, making sure we keep this as a bipartisan issue.”
“There's only one candidate running for president who's called crypto a scam, and that's Donald Trump,” Nickel noted. “Donald Trump is just totally full of shit.”
Many speakers also couldn’t resist taking jabs at the Republican party.
“Supporting crypto is not about increasing the bags of elite Bitcoin maxis,” said Billionaire and Shark Tank personality Mark Cuban during the event. “Crypto is not about the elite—it's about egalitarianism—and that's such a huge opportunity for us because the rest of us need crypto, and the Republicans couldn't care less.”
Former president Donald Trump and his campaign have made bold overtures to the digital asset industry, making a number of promises, ranging from boosting domestic Bitcoin mining and creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve to ending what critics call the current administration‘s “war on crypto”—targeting Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler.
Despite the apparent partisan divide, however, there are crypto allies on the Democratic side, representing a demographic that could still be “up for grabs.” And there are signs that Vice President Kamala Harris’ team has been making a “concerted effort” to reach out to the industry.
The call's organizers told Decrypt last week, “This is about putting a new foot forward.”
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair