Published: September 11th, 2024
Democratic US presidential candidate Kamala Harris released a list of proposed policy positions this week for her bid to enter the White House. Cryptocurrencies were notably absent from the document, avoiding any references to Bitcoin or the digital asset marketplace in general.
The broader tech sector does merit a mention on her campaign website. Under ‘new Issues’ is a section where she declares her dedication to backing ‘American workers and American innovation.’ The current US vice president also pledges that her administration will get behind the AI sector and support its continued growth. The website also mentions the importance of fostering ‘other leading-edge industries of the tomorrow.’
Some crypto market watchers have interpreted that last part as an oblique reference to the industry, but Harris has yet to mention the sector by name in any of her campaign communications. Some pundits have even suggested that she has never discussed crypto publicly at any point in her political career.
In that sense, making crypto a priority campaign issue after months of silence on any policy proposals would have been a surprise. The Democratic Party’s published platform, which is a lengthy document and goes into much more detail, is also silent on cryptocurrencies.
That's despite months of active lobbying by crypto industry leaders, who have spent significantly to convince senior American politicians to embrace the industry. Major industry players like Coinbase, and Ripple have made big donations to crypto-supporting political action committees (PACs), building a campaign war chest estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.
Fairshake, the biggest of the pro-crypto PACs, has raised over USD 245 million so far. The next biggest political action committee in this presidential election cycle is the influential pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC. Public records show it has raised less than half that amount to date.
Harris’ silence on the crypto topic echoes the early days of the Biden administration, when the SEC seemed bent on bringing crypto firms to heel and dragged its feet on BTC ETF approval.
In August 2023 a crypto-skeptic US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decided once again to sit on the high-profile application for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund from ARK 21Shares, delaying it indefinitely.
In a filing on Tuesday, America's top financial services regulator said it needed more time to consider the application’s merits before deciding to approve or deny it.
ARK Invest filed its application for a Bitcoin ETF, called Ark21Shares, in May of 2021. The company partnered with its Swiss sister company 21Shares AG to launch the new product. If it gets the green light, shares in the ETF would be listed on the Cboe BZX Exchange as ARKB.
ETF's track the underlying price of a given asset. They enable investors to take a position in unpredictable assets like crypto, without owning the asset directly. Many investors see ETFs as a way to take advantage of crypto gains while shielding themselves from potential volatility.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs have been a topic of intensifying interest for more than year, as the US has yet to license one despite growing investor hunger for a made-in-the-USA option.
SEC chairman Gary Gensler says the agency has been cool to the idea of crypto ETFs because it believes Bitcoin’s price is vulnerable to manipulation.
Experts say access to a spot Bitcoin ETF would allow investors to take position in BTC without having to take on the risks of custody.
The SEC is considering a number of high-profile applications for a Bitcoin ETF. Despite ongoing reluctance, analysts believe the watchdog has been signaling that one could be approved soon.
While it couldn’t stem the tide of investor interest in crypto opportunities, the SEC was determined to try and slow things down.
In late May 2023 the price of Bitcoin fell sharply and kicked off an overall plunge in crypto markets after the agency began enforcement action against Binance, then the world’s biggest crypto exchange.
In the view of regulators, the company ‘demonstrated utter disregard for American securities law.’ The SEC’s filing says Binance has 'illegally tried to convince US crypto traders to buy, sell, and trade digital assets’ which the SEC says are ‘securities’ under US law.
The agency’s lawsuit alleges that in December 2018, Binance’s Chief Commerical Officer (CCO) admitted the company was running afoul of US securities law.
In a separate filing also made on 5th June, the SEC added several leading cryptocurrencies, including Solana, Cardano, and Binance’s own Binance Coin (BNB) to the list of securities that fall under its jurisdiction.
In total, the agency said 12 separate tokens being traded on Binance were classed as securities. Crypto market watchers have noted that most of the 12 fetch minimal volumes and depend on Binance for the lion’s share of their liquidity.
In terms of overall trading volume, Binance is a dominant force in global crypto trading. At time of writing, data from CoinGecko showed that more than USD 11 billion in trades had occurred in the 24 hours between Monday 5th June and Tuesday 6th June. That beats the volume achieved by Coinbase, Binance’s nearest competitor, by a factor of 10.
The world's leading crypto exchange has often failed to inspire confidence amongst regulators and even business partners. In May of this year the company announced it would end deposits and withdrawals in Sterling from 22nd May, 2023.
An email sent to exchange users on Monday, 13th March said the company’s payments processor Skrill, which provided Binance’s Faster Payments Service in the UK, had backed out of a deal to support GBP transactions.
As of time of writing, new Binance signups were still being restricted from making GBP deposits. The company said in an earlier email that current users would still be able to access their GBP balances until the May deadline.
