“I have voted democratic my entire adult life and have NEVER been a single issue voter, even when it directly affects me (diabetic/insulin costs, etc).

BUT I will cross party lines and vote republican if my hand is forced on this issue. I will not vote to tank my net worth, outlaw defi and destroy my on/off ramps. Sorry, it’s not happening. My party will wake tf up or loose my vote.”

That’s just one comment by an etherean following the Gensler hearing in Washington DC that sparked a debate, especially among Democrats, about their party and its policy towards crypto.

The hearing, which was dominated by crypto issues, laid bare for the first time a party division that had numerous Republicans grill SEC’s chair, and not one Democrat.

That’s an outcome this space has tried to avoid, especially in ethereum. There’s a picture that summarizes it well where the now forgotten name – but back in 2016 was a prominent bitcoiner – poses with guns and all that while the other half of the picture is full of rainbows etc for eth, all under the caption: these two communities could not be any different.

In Washington DC, they’re clearly seen as no different at all. That’s partly because in the wider cultural or societal sense, ethereum has clearly been unable to breakout of the bitcoin shadow, at least so far. And thus just like bitcoin maxis, people like Senator Elizabeth Warren probably also think that crypto is just another word for bitcoin.

She’s building an anti-crypto ‘army,’ though we think it is more pro-regulations to pay the law firms that keep ‘donating’ to her.

But, she’s a Democrat with a big flashy anti-crypto banner and in the face of the silence of Democrats yesterday, this puts us in a tough spot. So we’ll think this through.

Wait it Out?

Democrats, if they have decided to make crypto a party issue, wouldn’t be the first to have a knee jerk reaction to this space formed by the five second TV segment and other thought bubbles.

Most famously, the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire initially came out against crypto to soon after u-turn and even metaphorically wave the crypto flag.

Everyone starts off as a crypto sceptic. That includes prominent Bitcoin Core developers, like Gregory Maxwell who claimed he proved a decentralized network like bitcoin is impossible, but changed his mind.

The bitcoin is dead meme in fact came from a collective skepticism moment when after a hack of a bitcoin exchange in 2011, most coders decided this crypto thing doesn’t work.

Yet bitcoin itself had not been hacked and bitcoin kept working, so some of them changed their mind.

Is there such potential within the Washington DC democrats? The answer is yes because in UK for example there are crypto supporters even in high places linked to Labour.

Crypto has not quite seen a Labour government yet, so how they will actually govern where crypto is concerned is unclear, but Labour has an election to win and so at worst we expect them to be neutral.

In addition people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have not said much about crypto. Whether she’s the future of the Democratic party is for others to say and none of our business, but if there’s a generational divide within the Democratic party then our analysis becomes a bit easier.

For cryptonians that lean Democrat therefore and can’t or don’t want to leave the party, that’s beneficial in a way too because crypto will maintain voting representation and because we can choose to keep being nuanced even if some in Washington choose otherwise.

And some cryptonians expressed strongly that they hold other matters of higher priority, mainly cultural matters related to gender.

They shouldn’t feel bad about it in our view. They don’t have to choose between crypto and Democrats if they don’t want to. Instead they’re the voice option within the Democratic party as clearly they’re the base of the party.

Just Ditch Them?

Exiting is another option and many cryptoing Democrats expressed they will exercise it because why shouldn’t they.

When we keep telling them we don’t want to be a partisan issue, when cryptonians funded both parties during the 2022 mid-term, when this paper backed Biden during the 2020 election, to get the appearance of an anti-crypto party line naturally courts the question of why not just ditch them?

What that means exactly is for time to say as we near the Presidential election when it’ll become a bit more clear just what exactly are our choices, but we can also decide to affect those choices starting now.

And yet we haven’t, in this paper. Ron DeSantis has a difficult choice to make and he slipped up significantly in regards to Ukraine, though he backtracked it.

It is extremely tempting to bargain Hester for SEC chair, and as the days go by the Democrats are making it easier and easier to reach such conclusion.

It wouldn’t be hard in fact to change the analysis to: we’ll moderate the Republicans on Ukraine. Obviously presuming Trump is not the presidential candidate. That’s unsupportable, not least because he dissed bitcoin so the crypto nuance would be removed there, but not with DeSantis.

So do we in turn just ditch the Democratic party? Ha! What a question.

Some cryptonians that have supported the Democratic party have expressed they will, but where this paper itself is concerned, there isn’t quite a decision to be made in front of us, yet.

Can’t say thankfully as there are other sorts of decisions, perhaps harder, that may lead to the actual decision and that is: is appeasing risky?

Risky in this case would take many forms. The worst one is that a muted response to a potential party line might cement that line.

It is obvious in our view that at least some Democrats have a different opinion on crypto, as clearly some of their base does, and so does giving a muted response mute them?

Because if these Democrats can do what they are without consequences, then why should they change? While putting pressure may at least encourage some in the party to argue that their approach is risky.

The most difficult question however is: if we have failed to moderate the Democratic party on crypto, then why?

Their Failure or Ours?

Bitcoin is a Swiss bank account in your pocket, the former President Barack Obama said back when.

And we expected that sort of thing. So we had great fun because we saw it as a great advert.

Swiss bank accounts are for the privileged and the rich, and now you the people can have one too.

There wasn’t much distinction in say 2013-16 regarding the parties and the government. Some were still thinking the government could ban crypto completely, and so the initial focus was to try and persuade one party, Republicans.

Why? Because they were not in power. In addition, New York came up with the BitLicense which the crypto industry did not like at all at the time and remains largely a failure. New York’s chief competitor is London, and the conservatives were in power in London.

London answered our call and was rewarded as the financial capital of the world until Brexit put a spanner on the whole thing.

Naturally eventually we moved to try and persuade Democrats too and we’d say successfully to some degree as there are plenty left leaning that do crypto and hopefully in London Labour will also show there can be a left leaning crypto friendly government, if they come to power.

If there has been a failure therefore, we wouldn’t call it a failure. It’s just US is a bit slow at the political level where we clearly have had great success to see so many Congressmen scold Gary Gensler on crypto’s behalf.

Thinking of that trajectory that got us here, if there has been a failure, it is neither ours nor theirs, but time’s, at this point.

Because the default is sceptic, and it takes time to change that default, and so Democrats may well be just behind Republicans.

Some may give a different analysis in regards to crypto fitting well with Republican’s small government etc, but the Democratic party is a big tend and crypto can fit well within self-empowerment, inclusion, and for the far left, the Securities Act 1933 is proof of class warfare.

There are DAOs in crypto, which are sort of co-operatives. The dollar has been tokenized for those that want big government. There is plenty for the left.

If our analysis is correct that the Democrats are where they are just because time, and even if it isn’t, then we have to do what we have to do and that is fight them, until they change their views, because we can’t expect them to change them on their own.

That includes by staying in the party and voicing your displeasure at their crypto approach, by leaving the party so it faces the consequences in the ballot box, and by putting the decision very much back on DeSantis on whether he wants to run.

On Ukraine, which is his most delicate point, the American people want someone ‘boring’ as president now, and they support Ukraine so boring is fully supporting it. It’s a democracy.

Otherwise, his decision would have been more on whether he thinks America thinks Biden deserves a second term, but Biden is clearly weak on the economy. Plus, is there a duty in a way for the Republican candidate not to be Trump?

On the other hand we’re not of the conservative base, we’re independents, so we don’t know how the whole thing would play out there, which is why it is DeSantis’ decision on whether to run.

All of which should be a clear warning to the Democratic party that they’re forcing some of our hands and that they need to think considerably on how that might play out with the electorate because there is a crypto vote but it is extremely unlikely there is an anti-crypto vote.

Even on the environment, we think or delude ourself in thinking this paper pushed the zeitgeist to the general level of consensus as we all want clean air and our parents on roofs fitting solar panels rather than on coal mines.

You can’t be concerned about the environment and single out crypto. That’s a systemic issue regarding sources of energy, affecting all industries and crypto is all for clean energy.

So where exactly would an anti-crypto vote come from Warren? What non cryptonian cares at all, let alone as a political issue, about crypto when if you don’t want crypto then just don’t use it.

Unless politics is now about pure opinion, like there’s this cool group that likes to wear green t-shirts in the winter, but Warren is too old and thinks people should wear long sleeves in the winter so vote for her because she’s anti-green t-shirts.

That applies more generally to the entire Democratic party. Where’s the gain in being anti-crypto? No one will vote for them because of it, but many – and it may be a million, perhaps ten million – might not vote for them because of it.

So the Democratic party will come around eventually you’d think. Until it does, Biden’s honeymoon is over.

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• Source: https://www.trustnodes.com/2023/04/19/crypto-democrats-torn-by-the-democratic-party