The US Midterm Elections are always a crux point when it comes to a president’s 4-year term, especially when it comes to his party’s capability, or lack thereof, of passing significant policies through both houses of Congress. This was also the case in November 2022, when Democrats thwarted a potential Republican red wave, notwithstanding the narrow loss of the House of Representatives, while they somehow not only managed to hold on to the Senate, but actually managed to gain a seat from the GOP as well with Rev Warnock winning the runoff in Georgia in December.
Unlike presidential elections, which have recently essentially been popularity contests rather than elections based purely on policy suggestions, the midterms results are usually reactionary to the presidential ones two years prior, and many voters, especially ones in swing states or independents, choose according to their policy needs rather necessarily along party lines. Among some of the most important themes during the past midterms was crypto regulation, especially after a very volatile 2022 – FTX collapse notwithstanding, as it happened almost simultaneously to voters casting their ballots.
Following the US Senate’s battles with Big Tech platforms over user privacy, with hearings from exponents such as Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg in Senate Committees demonstrating the extent of the conflict, several senators and politicians are urgently incentivizing the chambers of Congress to double down on crypto asset regulations. However, there have also been exponents on both sides that are more open to crypto adoption, as is always the case.
This is undoubtedly also due to the fact that, prior to its collapse, FTX boss Bankman-Fried invested heavily in campaigns of both Democratic and Republican candidates, in order to sway them towards the policy interests of the crypto community, and ended up being the sixth-largest donor in this campaign cycle. In addition, other leading crypto firms have also invested heavily in campaigns such as that of GOP Alabama Senator Katie Britt, who managed to defeat anti-crypto senator Richard Shelby.
Blockchain supporter Governor Greg Abbot of Texas also won re-election against Democrat O’Rourke, who expressed more skepticism when it came to digital assets. But it is not only GOP politicians that have been more open to crypto adoption: for example, Democrat candidate Jonathan Jackson, who has shown concrete signs of support for the industry, won in a landslide in Illinois, a predominantly Democratic state.
It is unsurprising that crypto firms have played such a big role in the election of several candidates as, for bad or worse, the crypto industry has received massive publicity boosts since Biden’s election in 2020, whether through downfalls or brand acquisitions – for example, in the past two years, two of the NBA’s leading teams, the Miami Heat and LA Lakers, sold their arena rights to crypto exchanges FTX and Crypto.com. A result of this exposure can clearly be demonstrated in a Harris poll taken just weeks before the midterms, according to which 38% of Americans were going to consider candidates’ positions on crypto when casting their ballots.
Crypto has essentially become a bipartisan issue in US legislative circles, even though Republicans have usually been the ones more supportive of its expansion, probably due to it’s ever-evolving nature. Indeed, there are also supporters and detractors of digital assets on both sides as well – GOP Rep. Tom Emmer recently proposed a bill to ban the development of a federal currency, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren has always been highly critical of bitcoin due to its energy consumption. Indeed the most comprehensive piece of legislation – and really the only serious one – that is being drafted in Congress is also a bipartisan one, led by Sens. Lummis and Gillibrand, that aim to set a regulatory framework for digital assets that will also focus on integrating digital currencies while at the same time incentivizing competition among firms and innovation.
