Crypto advocacy group mobilizes 100,000 voters as Election Day nears
Stand With Crypto recently finished a two-week bus tour through Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
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With just 48 days to go until the presidential election, bipartisan digital asset advocacy group Stand With Crypto is celebrating registering more than 100,000 pro-crypto voters across five key swing states in September, FOX Business has learned.
To mark the milestone, the nonprofit will host its second annual "Stand With Crypto Day" on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., also marking the culmination of a two-week bus tour through swing states Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where SWC advocates helped mobilize local crypto communities to make their voices heard on Nov. 5.
The "Stand with Crypto Day" celebration will be held Wednesday evening at the Black Cat music venue in the nation’s capital and feature a performance by pop music group The Chainsmokers as well as appearances from industry leaders, including a fireside chat featuring Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and North Carolina Reps. Wiley Nickel, a Democrat, and Patrick McHenry, a Republican.
Over 1,900 people have RSVP'd to attend the event.
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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong speaks at Vanity Fair's 6th Annual New Establishment Summit on Oct. 23, 2019, in Beverly Hills, California. | Getty Images
Coinbase, the U.S.’s largest crypto exchange, helped launch Stand with Crypto in August 2023 and in that time has signed on more than 1.4 million digital asset advocates to its cause, with around $1.5 million raised by the nonprofit, according to its website.
"I think the tour proved the hypothesis that the crypto voter is real," Kara Calvert, Coinbase’s vice president of policy, said in an interview with FOX Business. "They’re not just in these major tech hub cities, but all over suburban America, in diverse communities, and people are really excited about it."
Across the five swing states the group visited, 4 million total Americans own crypto, with 83% of them saying they are planning to cast their votes on Nov. 5. According to data from Stand With Crypto, there are eight times as many crypto owners enthusiastic about voting for crypto-friendly candidates in these five states than the vote differential in the 2020 presidential election. This means there are substantially more pro-crypto voters across these states than the voting bloc that made the difference between President Biden's victory over former President Trump in the last election cycle.
Against the backdrop of efforts to mobilize the crypto demographic, digital assets have become somewhat of a prominent issue in the 2024 presidential election. Trump, the Republican nominee, has been courting the crypto industry for several months, signaling he will embrace digital assets and roll back tough regulation seen under the Biden administration. Trump headlined the annual bitcoin conference in Nashville this summer and called for the U.S. to be the "crypto capital of the planet."
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump at the Bitcoin 2024 event in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27, 2024. (Reuters/Kevin Wurm/File Photo / Reuters Photos)
His challenger, Vice President Kamala Harris, has not yet taken an official public position on crypto. Still, surrogates held meetings with crypto industry leaders (Coinbase included) in order to establish a relationship and try to convince them that crypto is not just the issue of Trump and Republicans.
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on her policy platform, including improving the cost of living for all Americans, at the Hendrick Center For Automotive Excellence on Aug. 16, 2024, in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Grant Baldwin/Getty Images / Getty Images)
FOX Business has learned that those meetings have fizzled in the last couple of weeks amid intense industry skepticism over Harris’ record as vice president and her tangential role in the Biden administration’s crackdown on digital assets.
Meanwhile, industry advocates have donated a whopping $180 million toward various pro-crypto candidates on the congressional level through super PACs like Fairshake, whose goal is to help elect crypto-friendly lawmakers to Congress. The uptick in crypto donations this election has been significant; just $15 million came from the crypto industry in the 2020 cycle.
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"I think that there is a lot of interest and kind of why it's hyperdrived is because now we're going into an election where everything could change, and that's really exciting," Calvert said.