Eric Johansson here. 

Vice President Kamala Harris officially secured the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination on Thursday. 

Harris will face off against Republican nominee Donald Trump on November 5. 

Over the next two months, they’ll duke it out over the economy, abortion rights, the gender gap, immigration, and foreign policy. 

Will crypto be part of that debate? The industry hopes so. 

Crypto lobbying groups have spent an “unprecedented” $119 million to influence the election, according to watchdog group Public Citizen. Check out Aleks Gilbert’s story on it here.

Is it working? 

On the one hand, Trump’s repeated pro-crypto comments, and the Republican Party platform’s promises to “end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican crypto crackdown” suggest that the charm offensive has been effective.

On the other, the Democratic Party’s platform doesn’t even mention crypto, as Thomas Carreras wrote this week 

Harris has not made her views on crypto known. 

Instead, crypto watchers have engaged in a sort of Kremlinology, interpreting actual and rumoured appointments as indications that she may warm up to the industry.

And voters may not even care. 

While polls commissioned by the industry suggest that crypto could potentially turn the tide in key battleground states, crypto is not mentioned when traditional polls — including Ipsos, Gallup, and Statista — try to gauge the electorate’s temperature.

Joanna Wright has written about this extensively here, and here.

So will it matter?

Like the rest of you, I’ll just have to wait and see.

Crypto whistleblower says industry is ‘rotten’ as pseudonymous tell-all hits shelves

Ben Weiss interviewed a crypto insider this week who claims the end of the industry is at hand.

Fiancée of ex-FTX executive Ryan Salame faces up to 15 years in prison over campaign law violation charges

Callan Quinn reported on the latest chapter of the FTX saga, in which prosecutors slam a convicted executive’s girlfriend with criminal charges.

Justin Sun responds after USDD stablecoin silently removes $732m of Bitcoin collateral

Tim Craig wrote about Tron founder Justin Sun’s response to the Tron DAO Reserve removing $732 million worth of Bitcoin backing the USDD stablecoin.

Post of the week

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin faced pushback after warning the crypto twitterati against voting for political candidates just because they say they’re pro-crypto. This week, he hit back.