Kamala Harris’ pick for running mate, Tim Walz, has a blank slate on crypto, leaving the industry scratching its head on where he may land on the issue. By contrast, two of her newly-appointed key advisers are no strangers to the industry: one took crypto exchange Binance to court, while the other has worked for the firm.
The latter is David Plouffe, a top adviser to former President Barack Obama, who will be Harris's senior adviser for strategy and winning the electoral college. His sojourn into crypto began in 2022 when Plouffe joined the Binance Global Advisory Board to advise the exchange on regulatory, political, and social issues.
Then, in 2023, he took on a role as global strategic advisor for Alchemy Pay, a Singapore-based payment company to “bridge the gap between fiat and crypto economies.” Last year, Plouffe spoke with CoinDesk about the need to regulate crypto. "On the government side, there has to be a sense of, okay, let's not fit this new thing into old rules," he said. "How do we fashion new rules? But those rules have to protect the public, there has to be transparency, there has to be accountability."
Then there is Harris's other new adviser, Brian Nelson, who is leaving his job as the U.S. Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence to join the campaign, Axios reported on Tuesday. During his time in this role, the Treasury brought enforcement actions against Binance for violations of U.S. anti-money laundering and sanctions laws. The exchange and its affiliates were forced to pay $4.3 billion across two settlements—the largest such penalty in history.
Crypto's loudest critic Senator Elizabeth Warren has worked with Nelson for years, and welcomed his appointment to the Harris campaign, having worked with Nelson for years. "It's always good to have someone advising our leaders about the threats to national security that come from holes in our anti-money laundering rules," she told Politico.
'Hasn’t painted crypto as poison'
Nelson has spent a career cracking down on illicit finance, but there is evidence he is not virulently opposed to crypto in the same way as Warren. Nelson was “one of the most thoughtful people to occupy that role" when it comes to thinking about digital assets, a crypto executive working close to Congress told Fortune, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
"He's kept an open mind about crypto policy and engaged with industry," Perianne Boring, founder and CEO of block trade association The Digital Chamber, told Fortune, who has worked with Nelson as a member of the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group. "He’s deeply concerned about illicit finance usage but hasn’t painted crypto as poison like others,” Cody Carbone, chief policy officer at The Digital Chamber, added on X.
For instance, Nelson attended CoinDesk's Consensus conference in May. On stage, he spoke of “tailored regulatory and statutory approaches that will achieve the goal that we all want, which is to promote and support financial innovation here in the United States.” In that interview, he also affirmed that the Treasury does not intend to ban cryptocurrency mixing services. Plus, in February, Nelson fact-checked Warren, testifying that crypto accounted for only a small fraction of terror financing to Hamas, correcting earlier reports that the group has received tens of millions of dollars in crypto.
Further advisers to watch
Of the White House aides who will be sticking around for the Harris campaign, two of them will be meeting with crypto executives on Thursday, per Politico’s reporting. The meeting is organized by crypto-loving Democratic Representative Ro Khanna.
Others slated to attend the meeting include Lael Brainard, the White House’s economic adviser, who was formerly the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chairwoman. The person familiar says Brainard has been “incredibly thoughtful” about what a crypto reset could look like, and she has previously spoken about the need for regulation. “The recent turmoil in crypto financial markets makes clear that the actions we take now — whether on the regulatory framework or a digital dollar — should be robust to the future evolution of the financial system,” Brainard said in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, following the collapse of Terra Luna.
Anita Dunn, who served as a senior advisor to President Joe Biden, has left to advise the largest super political action committee backing Harris, and will attend Thursday's meeting. Last month, Dunn attended a roundtable with crypto leaders including Uniswap’s executive team, on behalf of the White House. At that meeting, “the message delivered via Anita Dunn was the Biden campaign is anti-crypto, and we are not even willing to reconsider our position at this time,” Boring said.
But, that meeting was pre-Biden’s resignation. While Dunn was delivering the party line, she has since been open to reconsidering what a reset on the industry might look like, the unnamed source said.
