Crypto
Sen. Schumer speaks at the Crypto4Harris event
A screenshot of Sen. Schumer speaking at the Crypto4Harris event

Sen. Schumer vows to pass crypto legislation in 2024 as the industry courts VP Harris

The Crypto4Harris event argued Democrats were crypto’s best bet.

The crypto industry wants to make one thing clear: it’s not all in on former President Donald Trump. 

A collection of crypto insiders and elected officials gathered Wednesday evening to stage a forceful rejoinder to the growing narrative that the digital asset industry is fully in the Republican party’s camp ahead of this year’s US presidential election. Organizers said the streamed event, dubbed the “Crypto4Harris Town Hall,” was the result of a “grass roots” effort that came together organically. 

In doing, they managed to grab the attention of those — like Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — who very well may help decide the industry’s fate in the US.

“And why are we here today?” Schumer asked in an attempt to clarify the stakes. “Because we all support Vice President Kamala Harris to be our next president, and we all believe in the future of crypto.”

Schumer went on to argue that pro-crypto legislation is key to innovation in the US. And in a moment seemingly designed to make headlines, he said that he is committed to getting something passed out of the Senate and signed into law by the end of this year. 

“Crypto is here to stay no matter what,” said the senator. “So Congress must get it right.”

“There’s only one candidate running for president who’s called crypto a ‘scam,’ and that’s Donald Trump.”

Others on the call went after Trump directly, in what could be viewed as an attempt to woo the crypto constituency that had dialed into the town hall. 

“There’s only one candidate running for president who’s called crypto a ‘scam,’ and that’s Donald Trump,” said North Carolina Congressman Wiley Nickel, referring to Trump’s opinion on bitcoin before a recent 180. “Donald Trump is just totally full of shit.”

The multiple Democratic Representatives and Senators on the call were joined by pro-crypto businesspeople, all making the same case: Harris is better suited to advance the industry in the US than Trump, and Republicans aren’t crypto’s best bet.

“Republicans couldn’t care less, they just want to see the bitcoin maxis get richer.”

Justin Slaughter, the VP of regulatory affairs at the crypto-investment company Paradigm, made the industry’s case for Harris. “I continue to believe that crypto represents Democratic and progressive values,” said Slaughter. “We’re long overdue for a reset,” he added, arguing that Harris is well positioned to move past what the industry views as the Biden Admin’s anti-crypto stance. 

“Supporting crypto is not about supporting the bags of elite bitcoin maxis,” said Mark Cuban, using a slang term to derisively refer to folks who argue that the original cryptocurrency will win out to the exclusion of all others. “Republicans couldn’t care less, they just want to see the bitcoin maxis get richer.”

If the goal of Wednesday’s town hall was to convince single-issue crypto voters and industry insiders that Democrats generally and Harris specifically are a better option than their Republican counterparts, then the Crypto4Harris organizers have their work cut out for them. 

Last month, the Republican party added supporting crypto to its official party platform. 

Still, Crypto4Harris’ message likely didn’t fall on deaf ears. Yesterday, before the town hall kicked off, NBC News reported that the pro-crypto PAC Fairshake planned to spend $3 million in support of two Democratic Senate candidates this fall.

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TeraWulf rises after reporting Q1 earnings

TeraWulf, the bitcoin mining company transitioning into data center development, posted Q1 results that were essentially on par with expectations, but investors seemed to like the future transition from volatile bitcoin mining to a “more stable, contracted revenue model” revenue stream driven by “higher-value HPC workloads.”

TeraWulf reported:

  • Revenue of $34 million, just missing analyst expectations of $34.7 million.

  • An adjusted loss per share of $0.09, exactly meeting the consensus estimate from analysts polled by FactSet.

Around 62% of the firm’s Q1 revenue stemmed from high-performance computing lease revenue, “representing the initial ramp of long-term customer agreements,” TeraWulf CFO Patrick Fleury said.

“As we continue to scale, we expect the business to be increasingly driven by recurring, contracted revenue, reducing exposure to the volatility historically associated with bitcoin mining,” Fleury continued.

Fleury noted TeraWulf had $3.1 billion of cash to support its continued transition.

crypto

Coinbase sinks after missing on Q1 earnings, revenue

Shares of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, slid in after-hours trading after it missed analysts’ expectations for Q1 earnings.

The company reported:

  • Total revenue of $1.4 billion, below the nearly $1.5 billion analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

  • Transaction revenue of $755.8 million, well below the consensus estimate of $808.1 million and a 40% decline from nearly $1.3 billion in last year’s period.

  • A surprise loss of $394 million, a $1.47 loss per share for the quarter, compared to net income of $65.6 million in last year’s period.

The firm has 12 products generating over $100 million on an annualized basis, with prediction markets being one of its fastest growing products ever, on track on become the 13th product, according to Coinbase’s presentation.

The earnings report comes in the same week CEO Brian Armstrong announced the firm is cutting 14% of its workforce, or about 700 employees, citing artificial intelligence and the need to adjust its cost structure amid a down market.

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Crypto blossoming with green shoots as ethereum and altcoins surge

Crypto markets are warming into a spring rebound as green shoots emerge in the sector.

Ethereum broke above $2,400 Wednesday morning, its highest mark since the end of January, with open interest across Binance, Bybit, OKX, Deribit, and Hyperliquid jumping to almost $12 billion from $10.7 billion on Wednesday morning, a sign new traders are opening positions, data from blockchain analytics firm Velo.xyz shows. 

Coinciding with the price action, institutional flows are positive, with ETFs seeing three straight days of inflows, totaling $260 million in the period, according to SoSoValue

“Crypto Spring, in our view, has commenced and like past cycles, investor sentiment and conviction are muted and bearish even as crypto prices strengthen,” BitMine Chairman Tom Lee said Monday, while announcing the firm added 101,745 ethereum tokens to its stockpile last week. 

Meanwhile, privacy and meme tokens are rallying, too:

  • Dogecoin, adored by billionaire Elon Musk, has climbed as high as 11.7 cents, a level not seen since January. 

  • DASH has increased 22.8% in the last 24 hours.

  • Zcash, a privacy coin, rallied to a five-month high, breaking past $600 before settling at $574 as of 10:45 a.m. ET, a 33.3% surge in the same period.

Zcash’s upswing comes after Tushar Jain, cofounder and managing partner at investment firm Multicoin Capital, announced that it “built a significant position in $ZEC since February.” 

“We believe that truly private, censorship and seizure resistant assets have clear product-market fit and demand is accelerating… $ZEC is the cleanest way to express this thesis in public markets,” Jain said on X.

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