Senior White House officials attended a call with about a dozen cryptocurrency leaders Thursday morning in the latest overture by the Biden administration to the industry.
White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed and National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard joined the call, along with Kristine Lucius, senior adviser and director of legislative affairs for Vice President Harris, according to sources familiar.
The call, organized by pro-crypto Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), comes as the White House and the Democratic Party have sought to mend fences with the crypto industry amid increasingly icy relations.
Khanna organized a roundtable with industry executives and Democratic lawmakers last month that was attended by Anita Dunn, then a senior adviser to President Biden, in her personal capacity.
Dunn has since left the White House to work for a super PAC supporting Harris’s campaign as the vice president has become the Democratic nominee following Biden’s decision to step aside.
Paul Grewal, chief legal officer for crypto exchange Coinbase, said the administration officials on Thursday’s call appeared to understand the industry’s frustrations and were eager to find ways to address them. However, they did not make any firm commitments, he said.
“I applaud [Khanna] for working valiantly to keep people talking to one another and to continue to urge Democratic support for basic crypto legislation and basic crypto standards that doesn’t cede this issue to the Republicans or make it any more partisan than it necessarily needs to be,” Grewal told The Hill.
Republicans, including former President Trump, have increasingly embraced crypto. The GOP included crypto in the party platform released last month ahead of the Republican National Convention, and the former president headlined a bitcoin conference in late July.
“I’m laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world,” Trump said at Bitcoin 2024.
However, as Harris’s campaign gets off the ground, her team has been in talks with the crypto industry.
“The conversation today, in many ways, was a real contrast to the other conversations that the industry has been having with the Harris campaign … about how she might mark a break from the policies of the past and really signal to not just the crypto industry but the 52 million Americans who own crypto that she gets it,” Grewal said.
White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson noted in a statement Thursday that the president initiated the “first ever comprehensive approach to supporting innovation in digital assets.”
“The Biden-Harris Administration will continue meeting with a range of stakeholders and working with members of Congress on legislation to develop safeguards that are necessary to harness the potential benefits and opportunities of crypto-asset innovation,” Patterson added.