Cryptocurrencies November 2024-

The Worst of Crypto Is Yet to Come
No matter who wins in November, the digital-asset market could be on the brink of a deregulation-fueled bonanza.
By Christopher Beam
(The Atlantic) The total market capitalization of crypto assets this year has been within striking distance of its all-time highs in 2021. The crypto sector has been the biggest political donor in the current election cycle, surpassing even the fossil-fuel industry, with contributions flowing to candidates from both parties. In May, the House of Representatives passed a bill that included many of the policy demands of crypto lobbyists, while the Senate rolled back guidelines by the SEC designed to protect consumers of cryptocurrencies. And both presidential candidates have flirted with crypto enough that, no matter who wins in November, the market could be on the brink of a deregulation-fueled bonanza. -30 October 2024

14 November
The crypto industry poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this election cycle.
What Crypto Wants From Trump
With a crypto-friendly president-elect and a Congress stacked with crypto supporters, the industry is getting closer to its ultimate goals.
By Lora Kelley
(The Atlantic) Much of the news about crypto in the past few years has been a mix of market crashes and CEOs going to prison. But the political events of recent weeks are offering crypto new hope: The industry, which poured at least $245 million into this election cycle (accounting for nearly half of all corporate donations to federal elections by August), will now have hundreds of sympathetic officials in office. Although crypto PACs seem to have stayed out of the presidential race, the industry is already reportedly lobbying Trump and his allies hard for favorable regulations, and is likely to enjoy broader influence in the Washington of Trump. He once denounced bitcoin as a “scam,” yet during his latest campaign, he began to embrace crypto, rolling out a crypto platform this fall and likening the technology, for some reason, to “the steel industry of a hundred years ago.”
The crypto world is using this new leverage to ask for what it wants, which is chiefly to see Gary Gensler, the Securities and Exchange Commission chair who has tried to crack down on the industry, fired (Trump promised to do as much during his campaign). It’s also working to defang other harsh enforcement efforts: As my colleague Christopher Beam wrote last month, crypto leaders are being strategic, asking for certain regulations that are still favorable to their companies’ growth. “The industry’s message now: Make crypto normal. Regulate us, please. All we want is to know the rules of the road,” he wrote.
13 November
Crypto legislation likely coming under Trump, ex-SEC chief says
(Reuters) – Congress is likely to adopt legislation governing cryptocurrencies during President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, Jay Clayton, a former top Wall Street regulator and potential political appointee, said on Wednesday.
Clayton also said he favored easing regulatory burdens to encourage companies to go public, remarks foreshadowing broad-based changes in public policy now anticipated by industry, which spent heavily to influence this month’s elections.

8 November
The Crypto World’s Victory Lap Begins
The industry made a $135 million bet on the election. It paid off spectacularly.
(Bloomberg) …as recently as last year[, r]egulators were circling, and token prices had yet to recover from a crash that saw investors lose billions of dollars. Sam Bankman-Fried, the onetime face of the industry, was on trial for fraud, and as far as anyone knew, Trump’s position on Bitcoin was what he told Fox Business in 2021—that it was a “scam.”
But in September 2023, with the industry’s reputation at a low point, Brian Armstrong, the billionaire founder of Coinbase Global Inc., laid out a plan for crypto to gain power in Washington. Three months earlier, Armstrong’s company had been sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which took the position that much of the trading that had been going on there for years was illegal. The suit, along with similar ones against other major players, seemed to threaten the end for crypto, at least in the US.
Armstrong, speaking at the Mainnet conference in New York, said he was optimistic the industry could get the government to institute more favorable rules. The key, he said, was money. To become a real political player, crypto would have to increase its donations exponentially, matching what Wall Street or the oil and gas industries give—at least $50 million a year.
By the 2024 election cycle, Armstrong had easily surpassed his funding goal. Crypto companies had donated more than $200 million to [crypto super PAC] Fairshake and affiliated groups, led by Coinbase with $75 million, making crypto the biggest-spending industry in politics. Fairshake started spreading that money around to congressional candidates of both parties, taking credit for helping defeat House members Katie Porter and Jamaal Bowman in Democratic primaries.