The crypto industry is corrupt & convoluted, but its survival strategy is simple: Control Congress. • Nevada Current

Jacky Rosen and Sam Brown each have been raising and spending millions of dollars telling voters to “pick me” in the Nevada U.S. Senate race.

But that’s not the only thing Nevada’s incumbent Democratic senator and her Republican challenger have in common. 

Both Rosen and Brown have each been granted “A” grades from the cryptocurrency industry, which describes them both as “strongly supportive.”

Nevada U.S. Democratic Reps. Steven Horsford, Susie Lee, and Dina Titus also got “A” grades and were rated “strongly supportive” of crypto. 

So were Republican Rep. Mark Amodei, as well as Amodei’s opponent, independent candidate Greg Kidd, and Southern Nevada Republican congressional candidate Drew Johnson, who is running against Lee.

The ratings were bestowed by the Stand With Crypto Alliance, a creation of the cryptocurrency exchange corporation Coinbase as part of the industry’s campaign efforts that have raised more political action committee money than any other industry during the 2024 campaign cycle.

The only Nevada politician ranked by Stand With Crypto who didn’t get an “A” was Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who instead got an “F” and was described as “strongly against” crypto.

“I support reasonable regulations on crypto – including my bipartisan bills to close loopholes that are allowing drug cartels and terrorist organizations like Hamas to use digital currency to fund their operations. That’s just common sense,” Cortez Masto said in a statement when asked about her “F” grade from the industry. 

The Stand With Crypto Alliance describes that bill as “very anti-crypto.”

“I look forward to continuing to work with my Senate colleagues to crack down on bad actors,” Cortez Masto added.

As if to reply “Bad actors? Us?,” the Stand With Crypto Alliance scheduled an “America Loves Crypto Swing State Bus Tour” to visit Las Vegas Thursday, headlined by Nevada State Treasurer (yes, treasurer) Zach Conine.

“America Loves Crypto” is an appropriate name for the event, not because America loves crypto, but because the crypto industry loves – indeed could not survive without – hype about crypto’s purported importance and popularity.

The industry spent some of its $174 million 2024 campaign warchest against whiteboard-wielding Rep. Katie Porter (crypto grade: F, strongly against) in her California U.S. Senate Democratic primary won by Rep. Adam Schiff (A, strongly supportive).

It’s also spending heavily to defeat Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, whose loss would give Republicans control of the U.S. Senate.

But the industry appears to be content to sit on much if not most of its campaign money, as if the fear that it might rain down political death and destruction via attack ads is itself enough to make politicians of both parties fall in line and stay on the right side of the industry. 

The only Nevada politician to have received substantial cryptocurrency campaign contributions is not Brown, or Rosen, but Horsford, according to researcher Molly White’s Follow the Crypto campaign contribution tracking site. The Nevada congressman and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus has received nearly $110,500 from crypto PACs.

As for all the other Nevada pols with A grades, the crypto PACs might not be contributing to them but, even more importantly, nor are they spending to defeat them.

Useless ‘use cases’

Crypto enthusiasts are jargon heads, so instead of identifying (or imagining) purposes for cryptocurrency, they instead natter on about “use cases.”

Fine. Fifteen years after Bitcoin was created, by far the largest “use case” for cryptocurrency is not the purpose originally promised – a new way to pay for things – but rather as a speculative investment, according to a Federal Reserve Board report published in May of this year. 

And if “America loves crypto,” the love appears to be fading. The Fed report found that only 7% of adults in the U.S. had any use at all for crypto in 2023. That was down from 10% the year before, and 12% the year before that.

Those who aren’t using crypto as a speculative investment might be using it in more nefarious ways, including money laundering. (It wouldn’t be that surprising if Las Vegas was the one place in the U.S. where crypto is used for money laundering more than for speculative investment).

You will be surprised (just kidding) to learn that the crypto industry’s estimates of how many people are using crypto are a lot bigger than the 7% in the Fed’s study, and that the industry’s boosters also promise robust growth for the foreseeable future.

Makes sense. If your industry consists primarily of holding then selling an investment in something with no intrinsic value and that doesn’t actually add anything to the economy except more investment instruments that don’t actually add anything to the economy, convincing the public that there is a demand for your effectively useless product – in other words, hype – is pretty much the foundation and perhaps sum total of your revenue model.

Hence things like ads during the Super Bowl, an “America Loves Crypto Swing State Bus Tour,” and of course, using hundreds of millions of dollars to get elected officials to act like you’re credible.

These things must be done if the industry is going to survive in an environment where the vast majority of the public may not be excited and curious about cryptocurrency, but rather just tired of hearing about it.

Creating the perception that elected officials comprehend the potentially beneficial if thus far elusive uses (er, use cases) of cryptocurrency and also genuinely think it’s crucial to the nation’s future economic competitiveness (or however politicians are phrasing their purported crush on crypto these days) isn’t just good for building up hype and polishing crypto’s image for potential investors.

It’s also good for attracting the biggest investor of all.

Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis (yes, Wyoming gets a U.S. senator; two of them in fact, sigh) has introduced legislation to establish a “strategic Bitcoin reserve,” by having the U.S. government “acquire” 5% of the total Bitcoin supply and hold on to it for at least 20 years.

As a pair of really quite conservative economists dryly observed while blistering the plan’s idiocy, the government holding on to the Bitcoin would be crucial because “We couldn’t have the government selling its Bitcoin and driving down the cryptocurrency’s price, now could we?” 

Donald Trump went from calling crypto a “scam” (a phenomenon with which he is not without expertise) that’s “based on thin air” to now promising to be President Bitcoin or whatever, because of course he has. So given the chance, he might instruct a docile Republican Congress to pass the Lummis scam, er, scheme.

If Kamala Harris wins, however… crypto will still probably get kid gloves treatment.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who seems to love recklessly exotic investment instruments almost as much as he loves the campaign contributions that accompany them, is all-in for crypto. And he’s leading a group of Democrats who are pushing Harris to “reset” the relationship with the industry. 

The industry wants a reset with the White House because Joe Biden and his Securities and Exchange Commission chair think crypto is super risky to consumers and the entire economy and needs to be regulated. 

Because how old is Joe Biden? He’s old enough to remember when slipshod regulation of deeply flawed investment instruments sent the entire global economy into a Great Recession and a decade-long tailspin so severe that Nevada never did fully recover.

Stand With Crypto by the way gives Biden a “D” and labels him “against crypto.”

Kamala Harris got an “N/A” grade and her position on crypto is listed as “pending.” 

The power of campaign financing – whether spent for or against a politician – is sometimes oversimplified by both the press and the public.

But crypto’s relatively recent acquisition of the United States Congress is pretty simple. And pretty crude. And demeaning, not only to members of Congress, but to their constituents.

Democrats like Rosen, Horsford, Schiff, Schumer, and Harris say elected officials like themselves must prioritize the interests of average people who are working hard yet still often struggling to get by, not powerful special interests. 

Those elected officials need to do as they say, and not bow before a special interest whose practical purpose they can’t even clearly explain to the average people they profess to care about.