When did crypto go Republican?

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True believers will tell you that the cryptocurrency movement — and the utopian digital economy it ostensibly envisions — transcends our current politics. Nobody locked down Josh Mandel. The diehard MAGA, currently running for the US Senate in Ohio, praises Bitcoin as vehemently as he whips all the dead horses of the culture wars. When he was treasurer of Ohio, Mandel made it the first state to accept tax payments in Bitcoin. (The Ohio Attorney General later found that Mandel’s unapproved actions violated the law).

Separation of money and state, not separation of church and state.#Bitcoin

— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) January 10, 2022

States that submit to the authority of Almighty God // States that do not

States that are pro-family // States that are not

States that invest in #bitcoin infrastructure // States that won’t

Ohio needs to be a pro-God, pro-family, pro-bitcoin state.

I promise we will be.

— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) December 28, 2021

Defend Crypto = Fight for:

₿- Innovation

₿ – Individual freedom

₿ – Citizens rather than politicians

₿ – Democratization of money

₿ – Make people big and government small#Bitcoin

— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) August 9, 2021

Conservatives already in power have also joined the bitcoin movement. Freshman Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming is arguably the strongest supporter of cryptocurrency in Congress; she bought between $50,001 and $100,000 worth of Bitcoin in August and is accepting cryptocurrency for campaign donations. It is set to introduce sweeping cryptocurrency regulations this year in a bill that would help integrate the technology into the existing financial system. House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has suggested the government use blockchain technology and pleaded for the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department to adopt a friendlier stance toward Bitcoin so that China does not advance in the area. (China has since banned all cryptocurrency transactions and mining.) Senator Ted Cruz also expressed his desire for Texas to “become the center of the universe for Bitcoin and crypto” during a summit on the blockchain in October. A week later, Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted that he aimed to make the state the “#1 for blockchain and cryptocurrency” after meeting with an industry group called the Texas Blockchain Council. .

The discourse of Crypto as a decentralized currency free from state control would naturally resonate with those who are skeptical of government. But when, exactly, did he become an object of partisan, that is to say, Republican obsession?

One of the promises of cryptocurrency is that it doesn’t require banks or government agencies to act as intermediaries for transactions, so users don’t have to trust large corporations. entities. The appeal to libertarians is therefore obvious (even if, in reality, cryptocurrency and the wider “web3” ecosystem imply a strong centralization). Senator Rand Paul, one of Congress’s staunchest libertarians, was the first presidential candidate to accept Bitcoin campaign donations when he ran in 2015. He even suggested that the cryptocurrency could one day replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

But it wasn’t just the increased prominence of libertarianism in the mainstream GOP that drove it to embrace crypto. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman posits that right-wing politicians, especially those of the MAGA variety, have an affinity for cryptocurrency due to heightened distrust of large institutions that former President Donald Trump sowed among his followers. “Bitcoin was meant to create a monetary system that operates without trust — and the modern right is all about fostering mistrust,” he writes. (For what it’s worth, Trump has always denounced Bitcoin as a “scam” that “competes against the dollar,” despite his wife Melania posting her own NFT.)

The appeal of cryptocurrency has also reached limits on the right. According to David Golumbia, a professor of digital studies at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies cryptocurrency politics, the online posts of anonymous Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto had certain identifiable ideological markers early on. “Whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is, there are quite a few things that I consider to be right-wing political tropes in what he writes,” Golumbia said. While Nakamoto’s particular critiques of financial systems controlled by dark elites are not inherently extremist, they are part of a legacy of far-right thinking that goes back to foundational anti-Semitic texts. “Especially in some of his forum posts, there is a lot of talk about the nature of fiat money and sound money, which especially in the US and UK goes back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion at the end of the 19th century.” It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that far-right extremists were early adopters of cryptocurrency and are still enthusiastically embracing the technology as a means of funding their movements. “They really seem to believe that governments exist to pretend to represent the interests of the people, but they are actually all thieves and liars who rob people through inflation,” Golumbia said.

With the exception of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who receives his first three paychecks in Bitcoin to demonstrate his friendship with crypto, prominent Democrats have generally been more skeptical of the consequences of the technology due to the lack of regulations and environmental impacts. Around 2017, when Bitcoin’s meteoric rise in price was making headlines, Democrats and Republicans pushed to regulate crypto. However, partisan fault lines have since emerged. “Over time, we’ve seen more and more that it’s the Republicans who have been against it. [regulation], and it was the Democrats who pushed it forward,” said Golumbia, who noted that crypto industry lobbyists seem to have found a more receptive audience with the GOP. A House Financial Services Committee hearing in December highlighted these divisions. President Maxine Waters of California, who has long criticized the technology, expressed concern during the hearing about the “rapid growth” of cryptocurrency with little regulation and the potential for fraud. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked the CEO of a digital currency payments company, “What do you say to people who say this doesn’t feel like a new financial system per se, but an extension of the old one. ?” Republican Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who is the most senior member of the Financial Services Committee, in response attacked Democrats for not understanding cryptocurrency well and for taking a regulatory approach that will stifle innovation. . He also claimed that there are already enough regulations in place. Overall, Republicans seem determined to move slowly when it comes to overhauling cryptocurrency laws, at least until after the midterm elections.

Within the wider population, however, partisan divisions are not so clear-cut on the issue of cryptocurrency. A recent Morning Consult poll found that 9% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans think there are too many cryptocurrency regulations. Conversely, 26% of Democrats and 19% of Republicans believe there are not enough cryptocurrency regulations, a 7-point gap that Morning Consult calls quite narrow when it comes to cryptocurrencies. opinions on financial laws. The most striking divisions were rather generational.

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The cryptocurrency industry also seems to be trying to stay above the partisan fray and curry favor from both sides of the aisle. Digital currency exchange Coinbase has gone to great lengths to avoid wider political debates; CEO Brian Armstrong made headlines in 2020 when he wrote a blog post in the wake of the murder of George Floyd dictating that the company would “not engage in activism outside of our core mission at work”, unlike other tech giants like Google and Salesforce. The movement nonetheless took on a political valence, as it seemed to respond to the progressive ideas permeating its workforce. When it comes to regulation, Coinbase and others have called on Congress to provide clearer guidance and create a centralized agency to oversee the industry, instead of relying on state-by-state enforcement. At the same time, crypto firms’ spending on lobbying skyrocketed in 2021, suggesting they want to have a good say in how these regulations are written.

Meanwhile, conservatives aren’t just promoting crypto; they hit him. There has been a flurry of new right-wing cryptocurrencies recently, ranging from a “Let’s Go Brandon” coin to a somewhat more outspoken “FJB” coin. Earning fun money has become another way to own libraries.

Future Tense is a partnership between Slate, New America and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy and society.

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