Crypto voters: "This election is pivotal"

As The Black Keys prepared to rock their hometown of Akron, Ohio, in the final stop of the America Loves Crypto Tour on Oct. 25, the grassroots campaign to mobilize cryptocurrency holders as a voting bloc reached its crescendo. 

The concert series, which rolled through five swing states in a distinctive purple bus, aimed to galvanize an estimated 4 million crypto owners into a unified political force before the 2024 election.

This year, cryptocurrency has emerged as a surprisingly potent force in American politics, with crypto voters wielding significant influence in battleground states from Ohio to Nevada. While some crypto holders are drawn to candidates promising regulatory clarity, others prioritize innovation-friendly policies or oppose what they see as government overreach — creating a diverse but increasingly vocal constituency that both political parties have courted.

“This election is pivotal because it's not just the fact that you now have two presidential candidates who are looking at this whole web3/DeFi conversation from a U.S. competitiveness space, so we're going to have a reset regardless of who wins the presidency,” said Cleve Mesidor, founder of the National Policy Network of Women of Color in Blockchain and executive director of the Blockchain Foundation. “We also have down ballot races, where you have a lot of candidates running for Congress, even running statewide, that have included cryptocurrency and blockchain in their campaign platforms.”

A divided, but engaged, electorate

Recent research shows Bitcoin ownership in America transcends political divisions and suggests crypto policy has become a significant factor in voters' decisions. 

According to a September Consensys Crypto Voter study, nearly half (49%) consider it important for their candidate to support pro-crypto policies. The study reveals a relatively even split in voter trust between Republicans (35%) and Democrats (32%) when it comes to crypto policy-making.

This report also highlights strong voter engagement with candidates' positions. Most voters (56%) support former President Donald Trump's pro-crypto stance, with a third saying it makes them more likely to vote for him. Meanwhile, 54% believe it's important for Vice President Kamala Harris to take a clear position on crypto, though opinions are mixed on how her stance opposing restrictive SEC rules will influence votes.

Other reports support the trend of growing bipartisan support and challenge the common narrative that Bitcoin is primarily a right-wing or libertarian phenomenon, according to the 2024 American Bitcoin Survey report from Nakamoto Project. 

While owners skew slightly liberal (45% liberal vs 41% conservative), the study found that the 14% of Americans who own Bitcoin are united more by their understanding of and trust in the technology than by demographic or ideological factors.

For many crypto voters, the central issue is regulatory uncertainty. 

"I think making it a place where there's less questions and not fear of retaliation without clear regulation is extremely important," said Alicia Cepeda Maule, co-founder and CEO of Givepact, a crypto-focused philanthropy platform. 

Her co-founder, Steven Aguiar, said a common thread among crypto voters is the need for more regulatory guidance.

“Voters want to see regulation that obviously prevents bad actors and frauds, but also protects the good actors and the strong assets as well," he said.

Industry experts emphasize that crypto voters aren't solely focused on blockchain policy.

"As a crypto voter and the crypto voters that I do know, we do want candidates, members of Congress, a president that is open to emerging technologies," said Mesidor, who served in the Obama administration. "For us, it is a priority to have candidates who actually want the industry to grow, but it is not the only issue we care about."

Advocacy groups like Stand With Crypto are rating politicians’ crypto policies on their website. Trump gets an ‘A’ as a strongly supportive candidate, while Harris is listed as having “not enough information,” according to the group's database.

Ant Mathis, president of the Georgia chapter of the Stand with Crypto organization and business development manager of Atlanta Blockchain Center, said Georgia has the most crypto voters among all the swing states: 40,000, according to the organization. 

Stand with Crypto’s mandate is neutral, with the goal of informing crypto-curious voters about the candidates' stances and track record on digital assets. Mathis said he hasn’t made a commitment to either ticket and is still “analyzing all candidates.”

The path forward

The election comes at a time of profound changes for the crypto industry, with a lack of regulatory guidelines and market uncertainty impacting some of the biggest players. ConsenSys, creator of the widely-used MetaMask crypto wallet and a leading Ethereum software company, said Tuesday it would lay off 20% of its workforce, citing regulatory uncertainty amid mainstream web3 technology adoption.

“The lack of clear regulatory frameworks in some markets has made navigating our evolving space unnecessarily complex for innovators, builders, investors, and businesses,” CEO Joe Lubin said in a blog post.

That’s a sentiment shared widely by crypto voters across the party lines, with many saying a proactive government position is overdue.

The future of crypto policy extends beyond the presidential race. Rahilla Zafar, co-founder of Focal DAO, emphasizes the need for bipartisan cooperation. 

"Ultimately, it's not about which party wins — crypto needs bipartisan legislation to succeed," she said.

Zafar, who has donated to the "Crypto for Harris" campaign, points to international competition as a pressing concern. 

"The United States is admired worldwide for our banking laws, and we would be the global hub in emerging technologies like crypto and open source AI if it weren't for the current regulatory environment,” she said. “Today you're seeing Europe and other countries have much better emerging tech regulation than the United States, which is absurd."

As the election approaches, both major parties continue to engage with the crypto community, and their growing influence is likely to last beyond the election.

“We're just hoping there will be more eyes on the topic,” said Mathis of Atlanta Blockchain Center, which hosts weekly networking and educational events for the community. “We are also hoping that there are more individuals who have open ears on being educated on the topic, and also onboarding themselves and their communities and their constituents into the field of blockchain, so that their constituents can start seeing that impact and the positivity of the technology within their own regions.”