Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned on Wednesday against voting for political candidates based solely on whether they have adopted a “pro-crypto” stance.
“The game of politics is much more complicated than just ‘who will win the next election,’ and there are many levers that your words and actions affect,” Buterin wrote in a blog post, warning that even Putin and the Russian government “have expressed a willingness to become ‘open to cryptocurrencies.’”
Buterin’s post comes as Donald Trump, who has positioned himself as a pro-cryptocurrency presidential candidate, rallies his party at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, and a day after venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz told Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) employees that they plan to make large donations to political action committees supporting Donald Trump’s campaign.
On an episode of “The Ben and Mark Show,” featuring the a16z founders, Horowitz said that the Joe Biden administration, in the form of the SEC and the FDIC, “fought them” every step of the way by “using very nefarious means.”
“They’ve sued over 30 of our companies, and they’re losing almost all of them, but the problem is when you’re a startup, you don’t have the money to fight the US government, so they’re destroying the industry that way,” Horowitz added.
Fairshake, a political action committee backed by major cryptocurrency companies, has become one of the highest-spending PACs this election cycle. Of the $160 million in contributions it has raised, 94% can be traced back to just four companies: Ripple, Andreesen Horowitz, Coinbase, and Jump Crypto.
“There is a certain ‘crypto-friendliness’ among authoritarian governments that is worth being wary of,” added Buterin, a Russian-born programmer who built Ethereum in his late teens. “The best example of this, as one might expect, is modern Russia.”
Trump has also endorsed Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, as well as cryptocurrency leaders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
In early June in San Francisco, tech experts, crypto executives and venture capitalists paid up to $300,000 per ticket to join a Trump fundraiser that eventually raised more than $12 million.
“In particular, by publicly giving the impression that you support ‘pro-crypto’ candidates simply because they are ‘pro-crypto,’ you help create an incentive gradient where politicians understand that all they need to do to get your support is support for ‘crypto,’” continued Buterin, who is known for periodically publishing longer articles expressing his opinion on existential threats to the ecosystem at large.
Buterin did not mention any names of political candidates or those he chose to support in his post.
Trump — who launched his latest batch of non-fungible tokens on the Solana blockchain in April — has been making increasingly bullish comments about cryptocurrencies.
He also accepts donations of cryptocurrency and has pledged to defend the rights of those who choose to hold their coins themselves, meaning they don’t rely on a central entity like Coinbase to store their tokens and instead do so themselves in personal crypto wallets, which are sometimes beyond the reach of the IRS. Trump also pledged at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington in May to keep Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and her “stooges” away from bitcoin holders.
Meanwhile, Trump, following a meeting with Bitcoin supporters at Mar-a-Lago with about a dozen mining executives who pledged cash and votes for him, announced that all future Bitcoin would be minted in the United States if he returned to the White House.
On Monday, Republican presidential candidate J.D. Vance of Ohio was added to his running mate list — a move many saw as a win for the crypto sector. Vance has called for looser regulation of cryptocurrencies and revealed in 2022 that he personally owns Bitcoin.
This is in stark contrast to the White House under Joe Biden, which is seen as tough on cryptocurrencies. Under President Biden, the SEC has stepped up its enforcement of the sector, and even in the absence of hard and fast rules from Congress, the US has proven to be one of the most active in imposing sanctions and legal enforcement against crypto companies.
The more the crypto industry grows angry at the SEC for arresting and prosecuting them, the more people like Vance see an opportunity to carve out a position on the other side of the crypto-skeptic Biden administration.
However, the perception that Biden is anti-crypto and Trump is pro-crypto has alarmed some Biden allies enough to make their case directly to senior White House officials.
Trump is scheduled to attend the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27.
