Kamala Harris’ absence from Bitcoin Conference a ‘really big mistake’

The last time American voters went to the polls, Bitcoin was trading at around $18,000 and three days later, FTX filed for bankruptcy . This year’s election couldn't be more opposite. Bitcoin is back up to roughly $64,000 and presidential hopefuls are honored guests at this year's Bitcoin Conference.

In 2024, cryptocurrency is a campaign issue and the country is seeing unprecedented influence from crypto money.

"There’s 50 million crypto holders in the U.S. That’s a lot of votes," Crypto executive Ryan Selkis said to former President Donald Trump in May.

It's only recently that Trump has positioned himself as the pro-crypto candidate. He announced his support for crypto back in May.

Trump is the keynote speaker at this week's Nashville conference and is also holding a campaign fundraiser there, where CNBC reports the top ticket is commanding $844,600 per person.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is speaking to the crypto crowd Friday afternoon, while new-in-the-race Vice President Kamala Harris ultimately decided against speaking, a decision crypto heavyweights warn will come back to haunt her.

Straight Arrow News caught up with Aly Madhavji, managing partner at Blockchain Founders Fund, as he attended the Bitcoin 2024 Conference in Nashville.

The following interview has been edited for clarity. Watch the full interview in the video above.

Simone Del Rosario: Is it a mistake for Kamala Harris to decide against speaking there?

Aly Madhavji: This is definitely a really big mistake. I think what we've seen from the Democratic Party over the last few years has been a fairly anti-crypto set of policies. And over the last, maybe four or five or six months, we've seen that sort of shift a little bit. We obviously had the Bitcoin ETF approval, most recently with the Ethereum ETF approval.

So there's been some small progress, but it's really an opportunity for Kamala Harris to distance herself, I think, from some of the policies that have happened over the Democratic Party and try to mend the divide and actually try to go out and really bring in and speak to the 50, 60 million Americans that hold crypto. And I think that's just a missing piece now with her not showing up here.

Simone Del Rosario: Crypto billionaire Tyler Winklevoss said, "She can't even take the first step and show up to start mending fences. Our industry won't forget this. We will show no mercy in November." Do you think that's the case?

Aly Madhavji: I do think that's going to be a big part of it. When you look at some of the concerns of, not only the American people but I would say this is almost a global issue, you look at some of the policies here and being anti-crypto, it's going to affect millions, tens of millions of Americans.

But not only that, there are also concerns on things like a CBDC or a central bank digital currency with government overreach. And these types of topics not being addressed, not taken seriously, I think are going to create concerns for a lot of Americans that hold crypto.

Simone Del Rosario: Do you think that a lot of crypto voters are single-issue voters?

Aly Madhavji: I don't think most voters are single-issue voters, right? But crypto is something that people are passionate about. I think it's a topic and a space where every single one of us has gotten hammered by inflation and you go to the grocery store and things are more and more expensive and you maybe put some money into a high-yield savings account and maybe you get three, four, five percent, but it's still not keeping up with inflation and it's not keeping up with what you're seeing every day happen in your life.

So crypto has been somewhere where people have turned that has outperformed pretty much every other asset class. So that is a big part of why people are passionate about this space, not only for the technology and what it's doing, but of course it's helping their bottom line, it's helping them make ends meet, it's helping them feed their families, it's helping to make a difference. And I think that's actually very important to the average person and the average American that that's going to be holding crypto.

Simone Del Rosario: No matter what, there's going to be a new administration next year. What do crypto voters want to hear and see most from a future White House administration? They're going to hear from two of the three major candidates this week.

Aly Madhavji: Yesterday I was at an interview from RFK Jr. and I think he made some really interesting points that I think a lot of the American people want to hear. He talked about adding, for example, Bitcoin on the balance sheet as a reserve currency or part of that basket. I think we're expecting to see Trump make a similar announcement on Saturday. We'll see. That's that's the rumor as of now.

But I think you also want to see deregulation on industries and figuring out how to actually make America be a leader in this industry. And I think for far too long we've seen, in reality, a lot of the jobs that could have been in America go elsewhere. And personally, I'm not an American, but of course this is an election that I think impacts the whole world and our whole industry.

There is incredible talent in the United States that I think could be capitalizing more on this technology if the regulatory environment allowed for it.

Simone Del Rosario: Aly, you're based in Singapore. How advanced would you say the U.S. is when it comes to crypto compared to the rest of the world?

Aly Madhavji: I would say the U.S. is fairly behind from a regulatory perspective. I would say from a talent perspective, the U.S. has many of the best institutions in the world, many of the best talent when you think about engineers, software engineers, developers, all the way through to great business minds.

And this is a gap because we've actually started to see brain drain over the last five, seven, eight years where a lot of incredible people have moved Southeast Asia or across Asia or to the Middle East. Dubai, Singapore, Switzerland have all really built themselves as the place to go if you're going to be building in the Web3 or blockchain industries.

And I think that's really at the detriment to places like the United States, even Canada, which has had, not the most friendliest regulatory environments for this industry. I think it's really impacted these countries.

Simone Del Rosario: What does Singapore have that the United States does not?

Aly Madhavji: I think Singapore, while it has a very high regulatory bar, I think they've created clarity. They've actually put out policies. It's very clear on what you need to do to get licensed. There is a very clear way to get licensed.

You don't have these types of issues like what Coinbase is facing where they go out, they follow all of the rules, they go on their S-1 and then they get listed. And then, you know, the SEC comes back and says, "Hey, we didn't actually read all of this stuff in your S-1 and we're going to go back and we're going to have a legal battle."

These things are detrimental to everybody. Coinbase is a stock that's going to be in a lot of people's 401ks or in their investment portfolio. And that's going to impact them negatively as well.

So these types of things in this uncertain regulatory environment is not good for anyone and really any industry, especially in innovative industry. And I'm not talking about just blockchain, but this is going to be the same thing on AI. It's going to be the same thing on any of these industries that are really pushing the needle.

Simone Del Rosario: Like AI, crypto mining draws a lot of power . How concerned would you say people are about climate and alternative energy sources and where does that fall with political priorities?

Aly Madhavji: It's a really good question. I'm a very big believer in: To really change the world, we need to basically really test a resource. If you think about, historically, as you had major innovations, basically push the limit on a resource and then innovations come out to allow us to 10X, 100X, 1,000X the potential of that.

And so if we're talking about the advancement of human society as a whole, we need to be thinking about how are we gonna 10X, 100X our energy output because we're gonna need to do that. And how do you do that in a clean way? And I think this is more of the conversation because whether it's Bitcoin or AI or other things, it's going to consume a lot of energy as we continue to progress. And I think there's a lot of solutions from an infrastructure perspective that we can start to implement as a country, from a policy perspective that we can drive better energy solutions in the country that are green. And I think that's a really big part of it.

But Bitcoin is really about a really stable infrastructure that I think allows us to get away from the traditional banking system. And I think there's many people that have really brought up risks around currency and currency devaluation. If a lot of people are concerned about the debt and rising debt in the United States, these are things that really get hedged from Bitcoin. And this is actually a critical industry to be in the United States and abroad.

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