Nelson’s comments come despite the fact that the Democratic Party’s 2024 policy platform makes no mention of cryptography.
Harris’ campaign says it will support the crypto community despite the Democratic Party’s failure to announce a web3 policy platform.
During an Aug. 21 panel hosted by Bloomberg News, Brian Nelson, a senior campaign adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, said Harris would champion policies that support the growth of digital assets if elected president.
Responding to questions about the campaign’s stance on crypto, Nelson assured that a Harris administration would support web3 innovation.
“She’s going to support policies that ensure that emerging technologies and these types of industries can continue to grow,” Nelson said.
Nelson stressed that the administration would bring regulatory clarity to the web3 industry — moving away from the uncertainty and ambiguity that plagued the sector throughout Biden’s presidency under Gary Gensler as head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
“They expressed that one of the things they need is stable rules, rules of the road,” Nelson added.
Nelson is the U.S. Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
In May, Nelson described unregulated stablecoins as a threat to national security. Nelson also oversaw the department’s first risk report on non-fungible tokens (NFTs), suggesting an aggressive stance on Web3.
Uncertainty surrounds Harris’ cryptocurrency policy
Nelson’s comments come as the crypto community eagerly awaits the Harris campaign’s official Web3 policy.
Celebrity investor Mark Cuban and SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci have recently sought to portray Harris as friendlier to Web3 than the Biden administration following her rise to the top of the Democratic ticket.
“It’s clear that Kamala has a deep interest in not only crypto in general, but also Web3 and what it’s capable of,” Cuban told The Defiant. “I expect her to be a major asset to the industry.”
However, cryptocurrency policy was noticeably absent from the Democratic Party’s recently announced 2024 policy platform.
On August 8, Democratic Party officials also held a Zoom meeting with cryptocurrency industry executives and industry representatives. However, the discussion reportedly went poorly, with cryptocurrency industry executives citing the hostile regulatory climate overseen by the Biden administration.
However, Harris also added David Plouffe, a former member of Binance’s global advisory board and former adviser to President Barack Obama, to her campaign team.
Trump Courts Crypto Votes
In contrast, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been actively courting the crypto community since May, a notable shift from when he described Bitcoin as a “scam” in 2021.
Trump has since begun making campaign donations in cryptocurrency, held a meeting with Bitcoin mining executives, and delivered a keynote speech at the recent Bitcoin2024 conference. During his speech, Trump pledged to fire Gensler, never sell the U.S. government’s BTC holdings, and make the United States the “cryptocurrency capital of the world.”
Recent documents show that Trump holds between $1 million and $5 million worth of Ethereum (ETH). Trump earned $7.15 million from a licensing deal with NFT INT, the company behind the Trump digital trading card collections.
Read more: Kamala silences Trump on Polymarket as Democrats open up to crypto
