Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned on Wednesday against voting solely based on whether a political candidate takes a “pro-cryptocurrency” stance.
“The game of politics is much more complex than ‘who wins the next election?’ There are so many levers that your words and actions affect,” Buterin wrote in a blog post Even Putin and the Russian government “expressed a willingness to be ‘open’ to cryptocurrencies,” according to the warning.
Buterin’s position comes as Donald Trump positions himself as a pro-cryptocurrency presidential candidate, rallying party members at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee just as venture capitalists The day after Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz told Andreessen Horowitz staff (a16z) they planned to donate money to supporters of Donald Trump The campaign’s political action committee made large donations.
In an episode of “The Ben and Mark Show,” During the show, which featured the a16z co-founder, Horowitz said the Joe Biden administration is “hitting every step of the way” by “using very nefarious means” in the form of the SEC and FDIC got them.
“They’ve sued over 30 of our companies,” Horowitz added. “They’ve lost almost all of these lawsuits, but the thing is, when you’re a startup, you don’t have the money to fight the U.S. government, so they’re destroying the industry in this way.”
Fairshake, a super PAC backed by top cryptocurrency companies, is now one of the highest-spending PACs this election cycle. Of the $160 million in total donations it raised, 94% can be traced to four companies: Ripple, Andreesen Horowitz, Coinbase, and Jump Crypto.
“There is a particular ‘crypto-friendly’ style prevalent in authoritarian governments that warrants caution. Unsurprisingly, the best example is modern Russia,” added Buterin, a Russian-born programmer. Ethereum.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and venture capitalist Peter Thiel have also backed Trump, as have cryptocurrency leaders such as Taylor and Cameron Winklevoss.
In San Francisco in early June, tech experts, cryptocurrency executives and venture capitalists paid $300,000 per ticket to attend a Trump fundraiser that ended up Raised over $12 million.
“In particular, by publicly giving the impression that you support a ‘pro-crypto’ candidate because they are ‘pro-crypto,’ you are helping to create an incentive gradient that lets politicians understand that they need to get All you’re supporting is supporting ‘cryptocurrency,’” continued Buterin, who is known for regularly publishing lengthy articles commenting on existential threats to the ecosystem.
Buterin did not name any political candidates or people who chose to support them in his post.
Trump, who launched his latest series of non-fungible tokens on the Solana blockchain in April, has been increasingly bullish on cryptocurrencies.
He is accepting digital currency donations and has pledged to defend the rights of those who choose to self-custody their tokens, meaning they do not rely on a centralized entity like Coinbase to hold their tokens, but instead use their own personal cryptocurrency to keep them. currency. Trump also vowed to retain Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren at the Libertarian Party’s national convention in Washington in May., and “her thugs” away from Bitcoin holders.
Meanwhile, after meeting with Bitcoin enthusiasts at Mar-a-Lago, where more than a dozen mining executives pledged cash and votes, Trump announced that if he returns to the White House, all future Bitcoins will be minted in the United States.
On Monday, the Republican presidential candidate added Ohio Senator J.D. Vance to his list of vice presidents, a move considered by many to be a net win for the cryptocurrency industry. Vance advocates deregulation of cryptocurrencies and in 2022 revealed his personal holdings Bitcoin.
This is in stark contrast to Joe Biden’s White House, which has been considered harsh on cryptocurrencies. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its actions against the industry under President Joe Biden, and the U.S. has proven to be one of the most aggressive enforcers of penalties and enforcement against cryptocurrency companies even without Congress enacting strict rules. one.
The angrier the cryptocurrency industry gets over the SEC’s arrests and prosecutions, the greater the opportunity for people like Vance to stand on the opposite side of the crypto-skeptic Biden administration.
However, the perception that Biden is opposed to cryptocurrencies while Trump is pro-crypto worries some of Biden’s allies so much that they are taking the case directly to senior White House officials.
Trump will headline the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27.
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