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Harris punts on crypto talking points, again
Hours after pledging to support Black men’s rights to safely invest in crypto, Vice President Kamala Harris’s Monday night speech fell short on delivering details.
Harris’s “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” debuted Monday morning. The policy proposal emphasizes how the administration will elevate the Black male community by giving them tools to “build wealth, support their families and lead their communities.”
One of these wealth-building tools? Give Black men the opportunity to “benefit from financial innovation” — namely, crypto.
Specifically, the agenda states Harris is committed to “supporting a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets so Black men who invest in and own these assets are protected.”
The proposal was published ahead of Harris’s planned rally in Erie, PA last night. More on that soon. First, let’s talk about the response.
Many praised the initiative as a welcome effort to elevate a marginalized community. Others criticized the language in the agenda, saying it’s frustrating that Harris’s administration sees Black men in crypto solely as investors (as opposed to leaders and builders).
The agenda itself mentions crypto twice. The first time was quoted above.
Here’s the second: “More than 20% of Black Americans own or have owned cryptocurrency assets. Vice President Harris appreciates the ways in which new technologies can broaden access to banking and financial services.”
It’s similar to the limited statements we’ve heard from Harris on crypto in the past — decidedly not negative, but perhaps too vague to be truly positive. Last month the presidential hopeful mentioned blockchain/digital assets twice; once at a fundraising event in New York where she said she’d “encourage” new technologies like crypto, and a second time during a speech in Pennsylvania, where she said the US will “remain dominant” in blockchain technology.
But last night’s appearance in PA left those hoping for more crypto-focused comments disappointed. She mentioned blockchain a total of zero times.
Still, maybe beggars can’t be choosers? Are limited, unclear remarks better than nothing? Galaxy Research’s Alex Thorn argues that Harris’s (relative) clarity is at least better than the current administration’s. In Galaxy’s “policy scorecard” released Monday, analysts say Harris is, on several issues, “somewhat supportive” and “slightly better than Biden.”
These issues include the industry’s relationship with the SEC, Harris’s approach to bitcoin mining regulations and her stance on banking laws.
Specifically, Thorn said, Harris has hinted that she’s interested in easing the so-called “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” policy that has sought to isolate crypto players from the banking system. But these ratings are based on a very limited sample pool; we just don’t have a lot to go off of when trying to evaluate Harris.
Trump, compared to Harris, has given the public more definitive stances on crypto. He wants to fire Gary Gensler. He wants to make the US a bitcoin mining hub. He wants to stop the US government from selling seized bitcoin.
When it comes down to it, though, we don’t have a comprehensive policy proposal on digital assets from either candidate. All we can do is analyze what they have said and look to the members of their respective teams to try and glean an opinion. But time is running out.
— Casey Wagner
~2,900
The number of people that purchased a combined 344 million World Liberty Financial tokens after the Trump-backed project went live this morning, onchain data shows.
The project has allocated 20 billion of its 100 billion total tokens for public sale. The sale was open to accredited investors in the US. KYC efforts for WIFL began two weeks ago.
DTCC again swoops into tokenization segment at ‘inflection point’
It was almost a year ago exactly that the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) revealed its buy of blockchain-based financial and regulatory tech developer Securrency.
Now, the financial market infrastructure giant has introduced a so-called sandbox to “clear the path to scalable adoption of digital assets.”
For those who don’t know, the DTCC (per its website), processes trillions of dollars in securities transactions daily.
Dubbed DTCC Digital Launchpad, the new offering seeks to connect tech providers and others to collaborate on “pilots that have a clear path to production.”
The Japan Securities Clearing Corporation (JSCC) led a proof-of-concept on the platform to explore how central counterparties could use tokenization within the collateral management process for clearing members and their buy-side firms. It paid special attention to how margin calls could be automated — boosting efficiency and transparency using digital assets and smart contracts.
Ultimately, JSCC used DTCC’s blockchain-based infrastructure to issue digital assets such as cash, stocks and bonds, JSCC CEO Konuma Yasuyuki noted in a statement.
Last year’s Securrency deal was meant to allow DTCC to quicken the development of a platform designed to “unlock the power of institutional DeFi,” the company said at the time.
Elliot Chun, a partner at advisory firm Architect Partners, wrote in a research note last year that tokenization had not yet lived up to its promise.
“The fundamental way to move the industry forward is by having a critically important market participant make a significant investment in technology,” Chun said in that October 2023 post. “You can’t get more critical than DTCC.”
DTCC’s release points to the projection that $16 trillion worth of tokenized securities could live on digital rails by 2030. Standard Chartered expects the tokenized real-world asset market to hit $30 trillion by 2034.
We’ve seen plenty of tokenization efforts take place in recent months — from TradFi players’ test of a Regulated Settlement Network to Visa’s tokenized asset platform sandbox launch.
And yet adoption of this technology has seemed to stall, argues DTCC digital assets head Nadine Chakar. The industry is indeed at “an inflection point,” the executive told Blockworks Tuesday.
“Innovation is an evolving process; if we continue developing in silos, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past and creating more fragmentation in markets,” Chakar noted. “We believe DTCC can play a critical role in developing this ecosystem, building a common infrastructure by encouraging industry collaboration around standards, data, liquidity and infrastructure.”
It may take a little while to know the impact of this new DTCC offering (with pilots and participants expected to be publicized in Q1 2025), but it’ll be worth paying attention to.
— Ben Strack
Coinbase exec weighs the presidential hopefuls
You just read Casey’s breakdown of the VP’s latest comments, and we are officially three weeks away from Election Day.
The results on Nov. 5 will matter a lot, Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad told me at Permissionless last week. But he also urged the industry to not lose sight of the progress made so far.
“It’s hard for me not to conclude that we’ve already had an extraordinarily successful election year, and whatever happens on Election Day will be just additive to the success we’ve already had by putting ourselves on the main political stage,” Shirzad noted.
Donald Trump “deserves enormous credit for what he’s said on the crypto issues and how comprehensive his vision has been,” the executive added.
In particular, Shirzad lauded Trump’s vows to support crypto businesses being built in the US and to push against regulators abusing their powers against an industry.
But more than that, what caught the Coinbase exec’s ear was Trump’s words about defending the right to self-custody crypto.
“My interpretation of what he means is that he’s protecting the DeFi ecosystem and the ability of individuals…to control [their wallet] and have all the Fourth Amendment protections and privileges that one should be entitled to,” Shirzad said. “I think that was a huge, huge policy victory, and I think it is the kind of thing we hope the Democrats will embrace at some point as well,” he said.
Harris deserves some credit too for the efforts she’s made to converse with the crypto community and her seeming intention to be more constructive on the issue, Shirzad noted.
Outreach sessions with members of Harris’s campaign have had a “positive” tone, Shirzad said — adding that her advisers are “eager to hear what we think the issues are and understand it better.”
“There’s reason to feel optimism on both sides,” Shirzad explained. “But at the end of the day, more substance and more detail are critical, and we’re hoping to get more from the vice president between now and Election Day.”
It seems that for some, Harris’s comments last night fell a bit short on the details. Whether she or Trump speak more about crypto over the next 21 days (and how into the weeds they choose to go) is anyone’s guess.
— Ben Strack
Bulletin Board
- Canary Capital on Tuesday filed an S-1 with the SEC for a litecoin ETF. The filing comes after the firm last week took a page from Bitwise’s book and threw its hat in the XRP ETF ring. These products need SEC approval before being allowed to launch.
- CFTC-regulated Bitnomial revealed plans to launch a US perpetual futures trading platform. The product announcement follows Bitnomial’s $25 million Series C raise, which closed over the summer.
- Coinbase on Tuesday filed a motion in its joint case (with consultancy firm History Associates Incorporated) against the SEC. The case, which Coinbase brought in June, deals with the SEC’s alleged violations of the Freedom of Information Act. Coinbase is now asking the court to schedule a hearing to discuss the exchange’s request for a partial summary judgment.
- US spot bitcoin ETFs notched $556 million of net inflows on Monday, as BTC rallied. It was the segment’s highest inflow total in a single day since June 4.