For twenty-one years, Brandon LaRoque operated a bar in Raleigh, North Carolina. If he had extra money in his pocket at the end of each night, he would go to an ATM and purchase XRP. He had no faith in banks. Owning something outside of the system appealed to him. When he opened his wallet app at four in the morning on a Wednesday, he discovered that 1.2 million XRP, or roughly $3 million, which was all of his and his wife’s retirement savings, had vanished.
He gave the local sheriff a call. No unit for cybercrimes. He made a call to the city police. The same response. After submitting a report to the FBI, he was given a form number and informed that his chances of recovery were less than one percent. “I hate to say that money caused me the worst day of my life,” he said afterwards, “but it caused me the worst day of my life.” Notably, LaRoque is a Trump supporter. He continues to disagree with the president’s handling of cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency is different from any financial asset that America has ever produced because of this tension between sincere believers who were burned, political allies who became wealthy, and ideological opponents who claim they saw this coming. Both supporters and detractors of gold exist. Class distinctions exist in stocks.
Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Crypto’s Political Rise | |
| 2024 Election Spending | Crypto firms contributed $119 million to influence federal elections in 2024 — nearly half of all corporate political contributions that cycle |
| Fairshake Super PAC | The crypto-backed super PAC raised nearly $203 million in 2024 to elect pro-crypto candidates; spent ~$40 million targeting Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a vocal critic who chaired the Senate Banking Committee |
| Trump’s Reversal | Called Bitcoin “not money” and “based on thin air” in 2021; by mid-2024 had declared himself “the pro-Bitcoin candidate” and accepted ~$3 million in crypto campaign donations |
| Key 2025 Lobbying | Crypto industry became a dominant force in Washington — David Sacks named White House crypto czar; Paul Atkins installed as SEC chair; Gary Gensler removed |
| The Self-Dealing Controversy | |
| Trump Family Crypto Ventures | The Trump family launched World Liberty Financial, earning hundreds of millions of dollars while Trump simultaneously deregulated the crypto industry |
| The Economist’s Assessment | Described crypto as “the ultimate swamp asset” in May 2025 — calling it the worst case of self-dealing in modern American politics |
| Consumer Harm | Ordinary Americans like Brandon LaRoque of Raleigh, NC, lost entire life savings ($3 million in XRP) with no recourse — no FDIC equivalent, no cybercrimes unit available locally |
| The Ideological Split | |
| Ownership in the U.S. | More than one-fifth of Americans now own cryptocurrency; 73% of crypto owners say a candidate’s stance on crypto influences how they vote |
| Democratic Opposition | Sen. Jeff Merkley and Sen. Chris Murphy have introduced multiple bills restricting crypto; critics call the industry a vehicle for insider trading, rug pulls, and regulatory capture |
| Geopolitical Dimension | Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned in 2019 that crypto posed a risk of “undermining currencies” and destabilizing the role of the dollar as global reserve currency |
| FTX Collapse (2022) | Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapse exposed the absence of consumer protections — billions lost, CEO imprisoned, triggering a wave of congressional attention |
However, Bitcoin and its relatives have succeeded in dividing the electorate in ways that mirror and, in certain situations, exacerbate the most severe divisions in American politics at the moment. One of the most politically charged sectors in Washington is an industry that was founded on the idea of avoiding politics.
The 2024 election cycle’s numbers are worth considering. According to Public Citizen, cryptocurrency companies gave $119 million to influence federal elections, which is almost half of all corporate political contributions made that year. Fairshake, a single super PAC, raised almost $203 million and spent about $40 million specifically to remove Sen. Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, the Senate Banking Committee chair, had been the industry’s most obstinate institutional barrier. Brown was defeated. The industry publicly rejoiced. Watching that series of events makes it difficult to ignore the fact that what was being bought was not only a favorable policy but also the removal of particular people who stood in its way.
A condensed version of the entire political narrative can be found in Donald Trump’s personal experience with cryptocurrency. He referred to Bitcoin in 2021 as “not money” and “based on thin air.” By July 2024, he was taking cryptocurrency donations on stage at the yearly Bitcoin conference in Nashville, promising to turn America into “the cryptocurrency capital of the world.” At that time, his personal cryptocurrency holdings were valued at almost $8 million. His family started World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency business that has reportedly made hundreds of millions of dollars, after he took office.
At the same time, the administration dismantled the regulatory framework that could have examined it. Polymarket, a platform associated with Trump Jr., was the subject of two federal investigations that were quietly dropped. The SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, was dismissed after years of pursuing enforcement actions against cryptocurrency firms. Paul Atkins was installed as a crypto-friendly substitute. In May 2025, The Economist put it bluntly: cryptocurrency had emerged as “the ultimate swamp asset.”
Even though the results have been unsettling, the ideological framework underlying all of this is genuinely fascinating. From a philosophical standpoint, cryptocurrency was created as an act of rejection, a means of transferring money without the use of banks, governments, or the authorization systems that are necessary for traditional finance. Libertarians, tech enthusiasts, those who mistrusted institutions for a variety of reasons, and, it must be admitted, those fleeing financial oversight for less ideological than moral reasons were drawn to this ethos. It didn’t fully account for the fact that you need someone to actually prevent politics from getting to you in order to escape it. Additionally, the industry learned the hard way that you can ignore Washington for only so long before Washington writes the rules without you when the 2021 infrastructure bill passed with language that threatened to impose reporting requirements on cryptocurrency. Miller Whitehouse-Levine of the Solana Policy Institute said, “That was the first big wake-up call.” “Policy won’t ignore you forever.”
In response, and with some justification, the Democratic side of this divide has hardened. The presidential family enriching itself from an unregulated asset class that it simultaneously controls the regulation of, the collapse of FTX in 2022 that wiped out billions in customer funds, the cascading rug pulls, the meme coins—all of these events have provided critics of cryptocurrency with self-written material. Sen. Chris Murphy referred to cryptocurrency platforms‘ war-betting markets as “insane.” Several bills have been introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley. The price of Bitcoin isn’t the main issue. It concerns the consequences of a financial sector gaining political control prior to the establishment of consumer protections.
It’s still unclear if this division will become permanent or if some of the controversy will eventually be eliminated by a regulatory framework. Nowadays, over one-fifth of Americans own cryptocurrency, and 73% of them claim that a candidate’s position on the subject affects their decision to vote. It is no longer a niche constituency. The issue is that it’s an electoral bloc. A financial product has left the realm of economics and entered a much messier realm when it becomes a loyalty signal, such as when owning Bitcoin conveys something about your political views and regulating it does the same. Not a single financial instrument in American history—not gold, stocks, or even the dollar itself during the 1890s debates—has accomplished that as thoroughly and swiftly.
