In the wake of the 2024 US presidential election, the cryptocurrency market has seen a surge, with Bitcoin hitting new highs amid a wave of institutional adoption. Although many attribute this good fortune to the current administration’s pro-crypto stance, the basic resistance to cryptocurrency would arguably go beyond political leadership.
Let’s consider an election scenario: what if Kamala Harris had won the presidency, preserving Gary Gensler’s leadership of the SEC and potentially intensifying the regulatory crackdown on crypto markets? Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani warned that Bitcoin may also simply “test” $50,000 if Kamala Harris had been elected. While the rapid market reaction likely would have been negative, old evidence suggests that the cryptocurrency’s long-term trajectory likely would not have changed significantly.
The most compelling evidence for this argument comes from reading how cryptocurrencies behave under regulatory pressures. Take Monero as an example. Despite serious restrictions and its exclusion from the list of primary exchanges such as Binance, OKX, and Kraken between 2021 and 2024, Monero has shown remarkable resilience. Not only has it maintained a truly extensive market capitalization of over $4 billion, but it has also noticed a steady biological expansion in usage and adoption, even without access to classic trading platforms.
This resilience is not a coincidence: it is architectural. Satoshi Nakamoto’s basic concept is not just about creating virtual currency; It is a question of designing systems capable of resisting the opposition of hard institutions. The main innovation of the blockchain generation is its ability to create networks that are incredibly difficult to censor or shut down, regardless of the regulatory environment in which they operate.
Under a Harris administration, we might have seen:
While those measures likely triggered short-term market volatility and potentially delayed institutional adoption, they would not have addressed the basic feature that makes cryptocurrencies resilient: their decentralized architecture. Just as Monero proved that a cryptocurrency can thrive despite being banned from major exchanges, the Bitcoin network would continue to process transactions and its integrity despite regulatory hurdles.
The immediate effect on the value of a Harris win could have been very extensive, perhaps even causing a significant market correction. However, the long-term trajectory of crypto adoption would most likely have remained intact, even if it had potentially followed another path. Instead of ETFs and institutional investment vehicles, we may have placed more emphasis on peer-to-peer exchanges and decentralized finance platforms.
This is not to say that political leadership and regulatory frameworks don’t matter: they obviously influence how cryptocurrencies integrate with classical monetary systems and how institutional adoption occurs temporarily. However, crypto’s basic price proposition — its ability to facilitate permissionless, censorship-resistant transactions — remains intact regardless of the regulatory environment.
Consider how Bitcoin has already survived many challenges:
Each of those occasions caused temporary disruptions in the market, but ultimately failed to save the long-term expansion and adoption of Bitcoin. This style suggests that while political leadership can influence the path followed by cryptocurrency adoption, it has limited force in saving such adoption. in total.
The Monero experience provides a particularly instructive example. Despite facing the most severe restrictions of any primary cryptocurrency, it has maintained the security of its network and its usefulness to privacy-first users. This resilience demonstrates that once a cryptocurrency network reaches a certain point of decentralization and user adoption, it becomes incredibly difficult to remove it through regulatory measures alone.
The technical wisdom of crypto-censorship resistance is proving to be more sustainable than expected. The ability to generate consensus within a distributed network without central coordination, combined with economic incentives that inspire participation in the network, has created systems that are remarkably resilient to external stresses, whether those stresses are. it comes from regulators, classical monetary institutions or even nation-states.
This isn’t to say that a Harris administration wouldn’t have affected the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The path to mainstream adoption might have looked very different, with more emphasis on technological development and grassroots adoption rather than institutional investment vehicles. However, the fundamental value proposition and network effects of major cryptocurrencies would likely have remained intact.
In essence, while political leadership influences how cryptocurrencies integrate with classical monetary systems, the underlying resilience of those networks – built into their very architecture – ensures their survival regardless of the regulatory environment. This technological resilience, more than any political or political opposition, is arguably the most valuable feature of cryptocurrency.
A community. Many voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.
Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.
To do so, please comply with the posting regulations in our site’s terms of use. Below we summarize some of those key regulations. In short, civilians.
Your message will be rejected if we notice that it appears to contain:
User accounts will be blocked if we become aware or if users are concerned about:
So, how can you be a user?
Thank you for reading our Community Guidelines. Please read the full list of posting regulations discovered in our site’s Terms of Use.