Welcome back to The Angle 👋 For the rest of the summer, I will be obsessed with the Olympics and Paralympics. I am already on day two of near constant consumption. 🇬🇧
In the midst of my pop girl summer, I experienced a rude awakening.
While I’ve been bopping around to the tunes of Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, and Charli XCX, the crypto industry — which I once covered incredibly closely — has increasingly been throwing its weight behind Donald Trump.
Yes, they are backing the US presidential candidate who is keen to strip away as many women’s rights as possible. And yes, the presidential candidate who just publicly said, in four years time, that Americans will never need to vote again because the election will be “fixed.”
This is a presidency that would threaten many of the freedoms that we as women take for granted. Many of which have been sung about so freely in the songs I’ve bopped around to all summer whether its Chappell Roan being “knee deep in the passenger seat” or Charli XCX tackling the conflicting feelings about becoming a mother while “running out of time.”
The crypto industry’s embrace of Trump seems to have started, at least publicly, when crypto exchange leaders — Gemini’s Winklevoss twins and Kraken’s Jesse Powell — donated millions to his campaign.
Support for Trump has been building in the intervening weeks on the back of a lack of a clear direction on crypto coming from the Biden/Harris camp. It reached fever pitch this week in Nashville at Bitcoin 2024 — one of the key events on the crypto conference circuit — where Trump, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and conspiracy theorist Russell Brand all gathered and received a warm welcome.
It isn’t surprising to see the industry align itself with Trump. Republicans have been more active in engaging with the crypto industry on regulation in the US, while many in crypto hold libertarian ideologies. Plus there’s a general frustration about the unwarranted attacks that have come from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Chair Gary Gensler, who was appointed by Biden, as well as the attacks from U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren over the past four years.
Trump only needed to make a miraculous pivot saying he was pro-crypto — which he did — and many industry leaders were ready to jump into bed with him.
I am dismayed that many crypto pundits who should know better are now blindly throwing fancy fundraisers for the Trump campaign. They erroneously believe that Trump is sincere and that if they just donate enough money, Operation Chokehold Crypto will vanish. That is poppycock. Trump is an astute politician. He will say whatever to whoever is to be re-elected. Once in office, anything related to crypto will be a distant memory - Arthur Hayes’ Hot Chick
While it’s understandable that crypto leaders can afford to be single-issue voters, it doesn’t make their decision any easier to stomach as an observer.
Reporting on crypto has always felt a little icky. While there’s some fascinating people and stories to cover, it’s also a space filled with blatant fraud, criminal activity, and reckless spending. I’ve always been of the belief that it’s still better to cover the industry, its best and its worst parts, and hold it to account.
Yet the industry supporting Trump feels like a different type of ick.
It feels gross.
We have an industry that claims to champion financial freedom for all, while backing a candidate who wants to strip so many freedoms from so many people.
We won’t have abortion or LGBTQ rights, but that’s fine at least we have regulatory clarity on stablecoins. Is that truly the industry’s stance?
And crypto media isn’t doing enough to spell this out. Yes, his presidency might be good for the crypto industry — if he really truly keeps his promises. But all his other policies probably won’t be good for anyone who isn’t a rich, white, and male. Then again, I suppose, a lot of crypto is white, male and rich — if the market is having a good day.
I count myself in this group of failing to hold the industry to account. I’ve felt too resigned to contribute to the discourse. I felt sick, but not surprised, when venture investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz announced they would be endorsing Trump. While I am sure there were many prominent voices of dissent in the Valley, I couldn’t see them on my algorithmically generated feeds and in that moment it felt as though all of Silicon Valley’s most powerful titans were rallying around Trump. Where were the voices of women in the Valley? I couldn’t hear them.
I originally intended to write and publish this newsletter last weekend and at that point I felt resigned. With deadlines getting in the way, I simply wrote the subject line “gross” and closed the draft.
A week on, there’s been a shift. It’s clear I wasn’t the only woman feeling silently resigned. I can see now that many of us wanted to fight back, argue our case, but we were waiting with bated breath to see the strategic direction coming from the Biden campaign. Now with Harris as the democratic candidate, Project Coconut is a go and I see a glimmer of hope amongst the viral memes and campaign videos.
That same hope hasn’t translated to crypto. I’ve watched Donald Trump be worshipped this weekend for his comments at Bitcoin 2024, while horrendous takes emerge with proposals that threaten the entire concept of democracy such as this recent tweet from Tushar Jain, general partner at Multicoin Capital:
Not everyone in the industry agrees with Jain as shown by the pushback to his tweet. Similarly backlash surrounding tweets made by Messari co-founder Ryan Selkis — which were so gross they inspired the title of this newsletter — ultimately led to his resignation from the crypto firm.
Kamala Harris — who is only a week into being the democratic nominee — is starting to make moves to seek a “reset” with crypto companies and outline the Democrats stance. I hope once the Democrats outline a clear plan for crypto, the industry will start thinking beyond this single-issue voter mindset. The stakes are too high not to.
As Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin aptly points out: voting based on a candidate who is pro-crypto will “carry a high risk of going against the values that brought you into the crypto space in the first place.”
If a politician is pro-crypto, the key question to ask is: are they in it for the right reasons? Do they have a vision of how technology and politics and the economy should go in the 21st century that aligns with yours? Do they have a good positive vision, that goes beyond near-term concerns like "smash the bad other tribe"? If they do, then great: you should support them, and make clear that that's why you are supporting them. If not, then either stay out entirely, or find better forces to align with - Vitalik Buterin
An industry source recently told me that you better agree with the broad policies of the party you vote for. The approach of regulation by litigation, as seen with crypto, has created a playbook for political parties to eviscerate policy areas they don’t fundamentally agree with, such as environmental rights, making it more crucial than ever to vote for a party for the right reasons.
“What's the nice way to say this? They're gonna learn the hard way what the implications of that are if they're not careful.”
I don’t really want to talk about politics. It’s not my job to talk about it. I can’t even vote in the US election. I am simply an observer. But as one of the few women who observes the crypto ecosystem, I don’t think I can sit back and be silent about an election where women and minorities rights could be eroded if the wrong choice is made.
- Kari