Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Wednesday warned against voting solely based on whether a political candidate has a “pro-crypto” stance.
“The game of politics is much more complex than simply ‘who will win the next election’ and there are many factors that your words and actions can affect.” Buterin wrote in a blog post: He warned that even President Putin and the Russian government have “expressed a willingness to ‘be open to cryptocurrencies.'”
Buterin’s post came as pro-crypto presidential candidate Donald Trump rallied party members at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and a day after venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz told Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) employees they planned to make a large donation to a political action committee supporting Donald Trump’s campaign.
In an episode of “The Ben & Mark Show,” At the event, which also featured the a16z co-founders, Horowitz said President Joe Biden’s administration has “fought” them every step of the way “using very nefarious tools” in the form of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
“They’re suing probably over 30 U.S. companies,” Horowitz added. “They’ve lost almost every single one of those cases, but the problem is that the startups don’t have the money to fight the U.S. government, and that’s how they’re trying to destroy the industry.”
FairShake, a super PAC backed by some of the biggest names in the crypto industry, is one of the highest-funded PACs this election cycle, with 94% of the group’s $160 million in total donations coming from just four companies: Ripple, Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase, and JumpCrypto.
“There is a certain style of ‘crypto-friendly’ common among authoritarian governments that is worth guarding against. The best example of this is, predictably, modern-day Russia,” Buterin, the Russia-born programmer who developed Ethereum in his late teens, added.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, venture capitalist Peter Thiel and crypto industry leaders such as Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have also endorsed Trump.
In early June, technologists, cryptocurrency executives and venture capitalists paid up to $300,000 a ticket to attend a Trump fundraiser in San Francisco, but ultimately Over $12 million raised.
“In particular, by publicly giving the impression that you are supporting a ‘pro-crypto’ candidate simply because they are ‘pro-crypto,’ you are contributing to creating an incentive gradient where politicians understand that all they need to do to earn your support is to be pro-crypto,” Buterin, who is known for regularly posting lengthy essays opining on existential threats to the entire ecosystem, continued.
Buterin did not specifically name any political candidates or those supporting them in his post.
President Trump, who launched his latest collection of non-fungible tokens on the Solana Blockchain in April, has made increasingly bullish comments about cryptocurrencies.
Trump has accepted donations of digital currency and has pledged to protect the right of people who choose to self-custody their coins, i.e., to store their tokens in personal cryptocurrency wallets that may be outside the jurisdiction of the IRS, rather than storing them with a centralized organization like Coinbase. Trump also vowed to keep Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren in office at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington in May., And alienate “her people” from Bitcoin holders.
Meanwhile, after meeting with Bitcoin supporters at Mar-a-Lago along with about a dozen mining executives who pledged to donate cash and votes, Trump declared upon his return to the White House that all future Bitcoin would be issued in the United States.
On Monday, the Republican presidential candidate added Ohio Senator J.D. Vance to his running mate list in what is seen by many as a win for the cryptocurrency industry. Vance has advocated for deregulation of cryptocurrencies and has revealed that he personally owns cryptocurrencies in 2022. Bitcoin.
This contrasts with the Joe Biden White House, which has been seen as tough on crypto. Under President Biden, the SEC has stepped up enforcement against the crypto industry, and despite the lack of strict regulations from Congress, the US has proven to be one of the most aggressive enforcers of penalties and legal enforcement against crypto companies.
As the crypto industry grows increasingly outraged by the SEC’s arrests and indictments, people like Vance see an opportunity to take a stand against a crypto-skeptical Biden administration.
But the perception that Biden is against cryptocurrencies and Trump is in favor has some of Biden’s allies concerned enough to take their concerns to senior White House officials directly.
President Trump is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee on July 27.
