Harris campaign advisors have mixed history with crypto industry

Vice President Kamala Harris has been fairly tight-lipped on the specifics of her platform since entering the presidential race three weeks ago. But with the Democratic National Convention looming, Harris has promised to release more information about her economic policy plans in the coming days.

While the presumed Democratic nominee has yet to say much about how she would approach cryptocurrency, we might make some inferences based on her advisory team’s past work in blockchain and Web3 regulation.

Brian Nelson, an attorney and former undersecretary at the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, left his federal agency job last month to join Harris’s team.

It was during Nelson’s tenure that the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a proposal to treat crypto mixing services as a “primary money laundering concern.”

When many crypto industry members expressed concerns with the designation, Nelson addressed critics head-on. He defended his policies on stage at the Consensus conference in June, acknowledging use cases for mixing services while maintaining that mixing services remain a tool used by illicit actors to conceal the origin of funds.

“From our perspective, we believe that there is a difference between sort of obfuscation and anonymity enhancing services and those that support privacy,” Nelson said at Consensus. “And we, of course, totally recognize that, in the context of public blockchains, which provides information about financial transactions, that there would be a desire to have a certain degree of privacy around those financial transactions.”

The proposed rule around cryptocurrency mixers and reporting requirements has not yet been finalized. Nelson added the agency is “committed” to furthering “stakeholder engagement.”

In February, Nelson pushed back on the idea that cryptocurrencies are a main tool for financing terrorist operations. He told the House Financial Services Committee that he believed claims that Hamas had raised “millions” in crypto were vastly inflated.

“We also assess that terrorists still prefer, frankly, to use traditional products and services, but this is something that we’re obviously monitoring very closely,” he said during the February hearing.

The Harris campaign has also brought on other past Biden administration officials. Brian Deese, former National Economic Council director, and former deputy director Bharat Ramamurti recently became Harris advisors, according to reports.

Deese in January 2023 co-authored a White House blog post addressing the administration’s plans to “mitigate crypto risks.”

While the post acknowledged digital assets could “offer ways to make payments faster, cheaper and safer,” companies in the space tend to “ignore applicable financial regulations and basic risk controls.”

Ramamurti — also a former Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., aide — reportedly played a role in the White House’s effort to block stablecoin legislation in the summer of 2023. The bill was able to advance through the House Financial Services Committee with bipartisan support in July 2023, but later stalled and never made it to a full floor vote.

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