Regulation

Elizabeth Warren Wins Third Senate Term Over Crypto Ally John Deaton

Published

2 months ago

November 6, 2024

Massachusetts’s Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has been re-elected for the third time after defeating the Republican candidate and the cryptocurrency advocate John Deaton on Tuesday.

Senator Warren’s win was confirmed by the Associated Press, which allows her to keep on being one of the leading advocates for financial reform and cryptocurrency regulation in the Senate. Warren, an outspoken opponent of the cryptocurrency industry, defeated Deaton, who ran with the backing of key players in the crypto space.

Elizabeth Warren Wins Senate Term Over John Deaton

As a politician, Warren has been consistently critical of the cryptocurrency industry fearing its potential to facilitate fraud and dodge regulation. She has been quite vocal on advocating for policies that enhance monitoring of the digital assets.

Warren has been a big advocate of an anti-money laundering bill that aims to expand the BSA, including KYC measures, to the cryptocurrency industry players including miners, validators, and wallet providers. This regulatory effort is to enhance compliance of the crypto industry to the normal finance, a thing she has emphasized in the debates and other rallies.

In an October debate, Warren brought up Deaton’s connections to the crypto industry and said that the industry was spending 90% of its budget to try to unseat her in Massachusetts. Warren used her opponent’s relationships with the industry to push her argument that crypto must be subject to traditional finance rules.

John Deaton’s Campaign and Crypto Industry Support

John Deaton, a lawyer and an expert on cryptocurrency, gained much sympathy from key stakeholders in the cryptocurrency markets. Other industry supporters of Deaton include Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, and crypto investors the Winklevoss twins and Scaramucci.

Such industry leaders supported Deaton’s campaign by contributing money to it; some of the payments were made to the Commonwealth Unity Fund, a PAC which works for the promotion of pro-crypto politicians.

Deaton, an attorney who has previously taken on the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over some aspects of cryptocurrency, aimed to paint himself as a Republican in tune with modern Democratic thinking on the cultural issues. He, as a result, promised to continue the efforts of legalizing Roe v. Wade if elected, sought to expand his base in a state that was largely Democratic. However, some of the largest crypto PACs that have previously focused on opposing the industry’s enemies, including Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, have not gotten involved in the Massachusetts campaign.

Implications for Crypto Regulation

Elizabeth Warren’s re-election means that the crypto industry will remain under close watch in Congress, particularly by the Senate Banking and Senate Finance Committees, which she will remain a member of.

This shows that more stringent policies will continue to be implemented in the future with regards to the regulation of virtual currencies.

John Deaton had stated that Warren was wrong to focus on crypto, since there were other questions that needed answering, such as inflation and border control. However, the Massachusetts voters chose Warren’s strategy and endorsed her comprehensive view of financial supervision and consumer advocacy.