Despite polls showing that the majority of Americans believe crypto is a key innovation for the future, United States Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is making her “anti-crypto” agenda a centerpiece of her re-election campaign.
In a March 30 tweet, Warren stated that she was fighting to put the “government on the side of working families,” and she prominently quoted a Politico headline that stated, “Elizabeth Warren is building an Anti-crypto Army.”
The senator was chastised on Twitter by the “pro-crypto army.” Coin Bureau, a popular YouTuber, mocked the strategy, saying, “Imagine thinking that building a ‘anti-crypto army’ will win you votes?” “, while cryptocurrency advocate Lord TJ said Warren’s stance would “push innovation offshore.”
While the senator undoubtedly has access to her own private polling on the issues, recent polls commissioned by the industry indicate that the position will not be popular with the majority of the population. A whopping 76% of the representative sample in a Feb. 24 survey commissioned by crypto exchange Coinbase believed that “cryptocurrency and blockchain are the future.”
A November survey commissioned by digital asset management firm Grayscale Investments found similar sentiments, with the results revealing that 59% of Democrats believe cryptocurrency is the future of finance. That is more than the 51% of Republicans who agreed.
However, in Warren’s favor, the 2022 crises of BlockFi, FTX, and Terra Luna have weighed heavily on public sentiment toward crypto, with a recent Morning Consult survey finding that trust in crypto had plummeted over the course of the year.
The phrase “Elizabeth Warren is building an anti-crypto army” first appeared in a Politico article on February 14th, where it was claimed she was “starting to recruit conservative Senate Republicans to her anti-crypto cause and getting some early positive vibes from bank lobbyists.”
However, the senator appears to have taken a liking to the phrase, as she has prominently featured it in her re-election campaign. Warren has long been a vocal critic of cryptocurrency, even arguing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published shortly after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX that it would ruin the economy.
On February 14, Warren pledged to reintroduce an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) bill she had previously pushed, which would include decentralized finance and decentralized autonomous organizations, as well as requiring unhosted wallets, miners, and validators to implement AML policies.
