Control Congress. • Nevada Current

Jacky Rosen and Sam Brown have both raised and spent millions of dollars telling voters to “choose me” in the race for U.S. Senate in Nevada.

But that’s not the only thing the incumbent Democratic senator from Nevada and her Republican challenger have in common.

Both Rosen and Brown have both received “A” grades from the cryptocurrency industry, describing them both as “strongly supportive.”

Nevada Democratic Reps. Steven Horsford, Susie Lee and Dina Titus also received an “A” and were rated “strongly supportive” of crypto.

That includes Republican Rep. Mark Amodei, as well as Amodei’s opponent, independent candidate Greg Kidd, and Republican congressional candidate Drew Johnson of Southern Nevada, who is running against Lee.

The reviews were awarded by the Stand With Crypto Alliance, a creation of cryptocurrency exchange corporation Coinbase as part of industry campaign efforts that more money raised for political action committees than any other sector during the 2024 campaign cycle.

The only Nevada politician ranked by Stand With Crypto who didn’t receive an “A” was Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who instead received an “F” and was described as “strongly against” crypto.

“I support reasonable regulation of crypto, including my bipartisan bills to close loopholes that allow drug cartels and terrorist organizations like Hamas to use digital currencies to fund their activities. It’s just common sense,” Cortez Masto said in a statement when asked about her “F” grade of the industry.

The Stand With Crypto Alliance describes the bill as “very anti-crypto.”

“I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues in the Senate to take on bad actors,” Cortez Masto added.

As if to answer, “Bad actors? Us?”, the Stand With Crypto Alliance planned a “America Loves Crypto Swing State Bus Tour” will visit Las Vegas on Thursday, headlined by Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine.

“America Loves Crypto” is an apt name for the event, not because America loves crypto, but because the crypto industry loves – and couldn’t live without – the hype surrounding crypto’s perceived importance and popularity.

The industry spent part of its $174 million in 2024 campaign money to elect Rep. Katie Porter (crypto: F, strongly opposed) in her Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in California, which was won by Rep. Adam Schiff (A, strongly in favor).

It is also spending heavily on defeating Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, whose loss would give Republicans control of the U.S. Senate.

But the industry seems content to keep much, if not most, of its campaign money. As if the fear that it could cause political death and destruction through attack ads is enough in itself to get politicians of both parties to fall into line and get on the good side of the industry.

The only Nevada politician to receive significant campaign contributions to cryptocurrencies is not Brown or Rosen, but Horsford, according to researcher Molly White. Follow the Crypto campaign contribution tracking siteThe Nevada congressman and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus has received nearly $110,500 from crypto PACs.

As for all the other Nevada politicians with A grades, the crypto PACs may not be contributing to them, but more importantly, they’re not spending money to defeat them either.

Useless ‘use cases’

Crypto enthusiasts are jargon heads, so instead of identifying (or coming up with) purposes for cryptocurrencies, they just blabber about “use cases.”

Fine. Fifteen years after Bitcoin was created, the biggest “use case” for cryptocurrency by far is not its originally promised purpose—a new way to pay for things—but rather as a speculative investment, according to one Report of the Federal Reserve Board published in May of this year.

And if “America loves crypto,” the love seems to be fading. The Fed report found that just 7% of U.S. adults had any crypto at all in 2023. That was down from 10% the year before and 12% the year before that.

Those who aren’t using crypto as a speculative investment may be using it in more nefarious ways, including: money laundering(It wouldn’t be too surprising if Las Vegas was the only place in the US where crypto is used for money laundering more than for speculative investments).

You might be surprised (just kidding) to learn that the crypto industry’s estimates of how many people are using crypto are much higher than the 7% in the Fed’s survey. What’s more, the industry’s stimulus also promises robust growth in the near future.

Makes sense. If your industry is primarily about holding and then selling an investment in something that has no intrinsic value and that actually adds nothing to the economy, except more investment vehicles that actually add nothing to the economy, convincing the public that there is a demand for your essentially useless product – in other words, hype – is pretty much the basis, if not the sum total, of your revenue model.

Hence things like ads during the Super Bowl, a “America Loves Crypto Swing State Bus Tour,” and of course using hundreds of millions of dollars to trick elected officials into pretending you are credible.

These things need to happen if the industry is to survive in an environment where the vast majority of the public may not be that excited or curious about cryptocurrencies, but rather just fed up with them.

Creating the impression that elected officials understand the potentially beneficial, but thus far elusive, applications (or use cases) of cryptocurrency and genuinely believe it is crucial to the country’s future economic competitiveness (or whatever politicians are calling their supposed love affair with crypto these days) isn’t just good for building hype and polishing crypto’s image with potential investors.

It is also good to attract the biggest investor.

Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming (yes, Wyoming gets a U.S. Senator; two, actually, sigh) has introduced legislation to establish a “strategic Bitcoin reserve,” by having the U.S. government “acquire” 5% of the total Bitcoin supply and hold it for at least 20 years.

As some really very conservative economists dryly noted while expose the idiocy of the planit would be crucial for the government to hold the Bitcoin, because “We can’t allow the government to sell its Bitcoin and drive the price of the cryptocurrency down, can we?

Donald Trump went from calling crypto a “scam” (a phenomenon he is not without expertise in) that came “out of nowhere” to now promising To become President Bitcoin or whatever, because of course he is. So if he gets the chance, he could instruct a docile Republican Congress to approve the Lummis scam, er, scheme.

But if Kamala Harris wins, crypto will likely still be treated with kid gloves.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who seems to recklessly like exotic investment vehicles almost as much as the campaign contributions that go with them, is all about crypto. And he leads a group of Democrats who Harris urged to “reset” the relationship with the industry.

The industry wants a reset with the White House because Joe Biden and his Securities and Exchange Commission chairman I think crypto is super risky for consumers and the entire economy and it needs to be regulated..

Because how old is Joe Biden? He’s old enough to remember when sloppy regulation of deeply flawed investment vehicles plunged the entire global economy into the Great Recession and a decades-long downward spiral so severe that Nevada never fully recovered.

By the way, Stand With Crypto gives Biden a “D” and calls him “against crypto.”

Kamala Harris was given a “N/A” rating and her crypto position is listed as “pending.”

The power of campaign finance – whether spent for or against a politician – is sometimes oversimplified by both the press and the public.

But the relatively recent crypto takeover of the U.S. Congress is pretty simple. And pretty gross. And humiliating, not just for members of Congress, but for their constituents.

Democrats like Rosen, Horsford, Schiff, Schumer and Harris say elected officials like themselves should prioritize the interests of average citizens who work hard but often struggle to make ends meet, not those of powerful special interests.

These elected officials must do what they say and not bow to a special interest whose practical purpose they cannot even clearly explain to the average citizen they claim to care about.