The following op-ed appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

By Dennis Kelleher
Nov 7, 2024

As the nation continues to recover from an anxiety-inducing election night, one interest group was never sweating it.

The crypto industry reportedly spent an astonishing $180 million on campaigns this year in an effort to elect candidates who support its agenda and defeat those who are opposed or even just skeptical of crypto’s claims — regardless of which party those candidates are affiliated with. Those efforts seem to have paid off. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of the industry’s biggest critics, just lost his seat while a slew of crypto-friendly candidates won.

But even as crypto-friendly politicians take office in January, there’s still one problem: Most Americans don’t like or use crypto. So how is the industry going to influence politicians to do their bidding while being deeply unpopular with the public? By pulling a bait-and-switch.

A CNBC poll from late 2022 found that just 8% of Americans had a positive view of cryptocurrencies while a 2024 Harris poll found that 69% of likely voters in swing states held negative views of crypto. The industry likes to claim that 52 million Americans own crypto but that figure comes from a deceptive poll paid for by the industry. The actual figure, according to Federal Reserve survey data, is closer to 18 million Americans — and that number is declining. Moreover, of those who own crypto, just 1% used it in 2023 to buy something, which is down from 2% in previous years.

So instead of focusing their political ads on crypto, the industry funneled money to campaigns through super PACs with generic, anodyne names like Fairshake, Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress that produced equally generic political ads. Crypto never came up.=

Take, for example, an ad by the crypto-industry-backed Cedar Innovation Fund against Ohio’s Brown, who has spent his career protecting Americans from financial predators. With a stark red coloring, the ad told Brown not to ship “American innovation to China.” The group also ran a video ad imploring Brown to stop the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission from sending U.S. jobs overseas. A knowledgeable voter might have several guesses about what these ads were truly about, but they would certainly not have guessed crypto.

In fact, Politico recently noted that of the ads developed by crypto political action committees this cycle “not a single one mentions crypto.” Or as one headline put it, “Want a crypto-friendly Congress? Run ads that don’t mention crypto.”

It’s as if Ford ran an ad campaign and never mentioned its cars.

The strategy was a brazen attempt to buy influence while keeping the public unaware of what they were supporting. This way, the industry can claim the now-elected officials they backed have a mandate from the public to support crypto interests — even though they don’t.

This may be why weeks before the election the legal head of Coinbase was quoted as saying crypto has “already won.” But there are reasons to be skeptical of this claim.

The industry is exaggerating what candidates have said about crypto. Some have suggested that congressional leadership will now be in lockstep with the crypto industry position, but most Democrats have been careful to balance openness to innovation with consumer and investor protections that are anathema to the crypto industry and its business model.

For example, earlier this year Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he thought pro-crypto legislation could pass this year, but he also said that Congress must “provide some guardrails to keep users of this technology safe, to preserve our national security and to ensure that this tech can’t be abused by criminal organizations.”

No interest group deserves to be at the top of Washington’s agenda just because it’s willing to spend tons of money. More than 15 years after the creation of Bitcoin and billions of dollars in venture capital investment, the crypto industry still has no socially acceptable use. The industry has made claims that it would make our financial system more inclusive, serve as a payment mechanism and/or serve as a hedge against inflation. These claims, and many more, have proven to be baseless.

Rather, the least disreputable use for crypto continues to be gambling and wild speculation. It remains a key tool for tax evaders, money launderers, ransomware, criminals, terrorists and rogue states like North Korea and Iran. It also enables fraud and scams that have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the American people. Those are the stories the Americans hear about, the reason why voters reject crypto and the reason the crypto industry is engaging in a shameless bait-and-switch campaign.

An industry that can’t even talk about its own product is claiming victory, but the American public knows better. Who will Washington listen to?

Dennis Kelleher is president & CEO of the nonprofit Better Markets.