Harris promises to support digital assets, hoping to win over the crypto constituency

The pledge represents quite a turnaround for the crypto industry.

9/23/24 2:13PM

Crypto's gone bipartisan.

Vice President Kamala Harris came out in support of an industry that has, over the past several years at least, viewed the Democratic party with suspicion. At a Sunday fundraiser in Manhattan, the current Democratic candidate for president assured donors that her administration would support America's tech sector.

And, in case anyone had any doubt as to whether that included crypto, she name-checked digital assets — a broad category that includes cryptocurrency like bitcoin and ethereum, as well as NFTs and other on-chain tech.

"We will partner together to invest in America's competitiveness, to invest in America's future," Bloomberg reports Harris as saying. "We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets, while protecting our consumers and investors."

The pledge suggests quite a turnaround for the crypto industry, which until recently had seemingly gone all-in for former President Donald Trump. Trump has promised to support bitcoin mining, and received endorsements from industry execs like Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

Small cracks in the GOP’s blockchain fortress began to show in August, however, when a Crypto4Harris event made the case that the industry wasn't a political monolith.

Sunday's comments from Harris suggest that message was received.

Sage D. Young3/20/26

Altcoin trading activity has lost its mojo

Non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies have seen their trading volume plummet in the past five months. The combined trading volume of ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin, SUI, and chainlink has decreased by 60% since crypto’s October 10 liquidation event, according to Thomas Probst, a research analyst at crypto markets data provider Kaiko.

Main Altcoins Trading Volume in USD — The trading volume of ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, SUI, and LINK.

For all altcoins, spot trading volume on Binance has declined between 80% and 85% to $7.7 billion, while altcoin volume on other exchanges has dropped to $18.8 billion, down from a range of $63 billion to $91 billion in October, a Friday report from Decrypt found, citing data from CryptoQuant.

“This trend may be explained by a contraction in market liquidity over the same period,” Probst told Sherwood News. “This phenomenon is also reflected in the average 1% market depth, which stood at approximately $2.6 million before the October 10 crash and is now closer to $1.7 million when aggregated across ETH, XRP, SOL, SUI, and LINK.”

Market depth is used by investors and traders to gauge the scale of liquidity in a market. 1% market depth refers to the amount of liquidity needed to move the market by 1%.

CoinGlass’s Altcoin Season Index, a measure to assess the performance of non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, has been sitting above 50 this week, suggesting that the current market is neither in a bitcoin dominant phase nor an altcoin season.

“Triple witching” day may put further pressure on bitcoin’s price

This is not “a favorable environment for risk assets.”

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy3/20/26

Sage D. Young

3/19/26

Hyperliquid is the “1,000 pound gorilla in the room” leading year-to-date market gains amid conflict in the Middle East

While the crypto industry has shed $564.3 billion in 2026, Hyperliquid’s native token has bucked the downtrend and jumped 54.8% year to date.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

3/19/26

Bitcoin tumbles as oil and gas prices spike and the market’s mood turns risk-off

Bitcoin ETFs reverted to outflows and bitcoin suffered $192 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours.

Sage D. Young3/18/26

Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter.

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions.

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

Payward, parent of crypto exchange Kraken, has put its IPO plans on hold