U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris “understands” crypto and may embrace it as an issue in her nascent campaign for the White House, Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-NC) said at the Bitcoin Nashville conference on Saturday.
“We had a total reset of the presidential election,” Nickel said, adding “we’ve been working hard to get a reset from Vice President.”
The comments come as twenty-eight democratic officials, including a dozen or so members of the House, pressed party leaders for a “reset” on crypto policy, Nickel said. Some factions of the party are pressing the Harris campaign to come out in favor of crypto, Nickel said.Crypto continues to emerge as a campaign issue in the 2024 election, which has already been flooded by tens of millions of fundraising dollars from industry leaders. Democrats have fallen well behind former President Donald Trump’s promise to be friendly to Bitcoin and crypto proponents that bristled at President Joe Biden’s administration and heavy-handed financial regulators.
But Trump once himself bristled at crypto: he called bitcoin a “scam” when he last held the White House from 2017-2020. Onstage Nickel needled Trump for this policy flip-flop, promoting hearty boos from the packed convention hall peppered with red MAGA hats. Trump is scheduled to speak later in the day.