United States Vice President and presidential hopeful for the 2024 Democratic party, Kamala Harris comes to shake things up as she launches yet another brazen appeal: this time to the cryptocurrency community and advocates of cannabis legalization. Harris’s “Opportunity Economy” agenda includes major areas of the economy, such as Black entrepreneurship, cryptocurrency regulation, and the reform of cannabis.
Harris’s Focus on the “Opportunity Economy”
Kamala Harris will address a gathering of Black entrepreneurs on October 14 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Chances are, she’ll mention how her agenda supports the success of Black-owned small businesses, cryptocurrencies legislation, and federal legalization of cannabis in her campaign.
One of the cornerstones of Harris’s campaign, the “Opportunity Economy,” is a plan that seeks to make the economic framework more inclusive. And one of her co-chairs, Cedric Richmond, pointed out that the agenda is designed to equip black men with all it will take to thrive economically. Harris wants “to build an economy in which Black men can buy homes, raise families, and start businesses, creating wealth,” said Richmond, interviewed by a local NPR affiliate in New Hampshire.
As part of a larger strategy on how to court Black voters, especially Black men-who make up a crucial bloc in a Kamala Harris bid-she is taking the economic opportunities in burgeoning sectors such as cryptocurrency and cannabis, aiming to position herself as a candidate who is forward-thinking and attuned to the needs of underrepresented communities.
Support for Cryptocurrency Regulation
Kamala Harris speaks quite decidedly on cryptocurrency and appears to have received much notice for doing so. Her early position during the campaign was that she was viewed as part of the anti-crypto zeitgeist, mostly affiliated with the U.S. government. Still, perception seems to be easing somewhat, at least for Harris, given how increasingly she leaps into the digital asset industry.
It is interesting that major figures in the crypto community back Harris’s campaign. One of Ripple’s co-founders, Chris Larsen, donated a million dollars’ worth of XRP to the Harris-Walz 2024 campaign. Such an investment gave an impression within the crypto community that Harris was a crypto-friendly candidate who would easily give way to bipartisan legislation focusing on regulating digital assets.
Kamala Harris is likely to make her crypto stance clear at the Erie event. From campaign documents, she promises to deliver a regulatory framework that guards the owners of cryptocurrency. The words in the documents changed from the earlier anti-crypto rhetoric and settled on the jargon of protection over the possession of crypto. This campaign works to protect Black men who are investors and owners of cryptocurrency, seeking their benefit from fair and clear regulations in the crypto marketplace.
Harris’s campaign pitch suggests she thinks the future economy will be highly assetized, its myriad goods and services digitized. Supporting a regulatory framework for crypto could easily go hand in hand with efforts to get more Black men to invest and profit in this newly emerging digital economy. Not everyone in the crypto community is convinced, however, of Harris’s sincerity. The campaign’s “crypto pivot,” some say, is all about politicking for expediency rather than any actual interest in really fostering the growth of digital assets.
Cannabis Legalization on the Federal Level
Kamala Harris is also speaking out on the issue of cannabis legalization. Many Black entrepreneurs have rallied against the criminalization of marijuana as coming to symbolize an even deeper issue-cannabis reform. To that extent, federal legalization fits within her overarching vision of equalizing economic opportunities for Black Americans, particularly in those regions where they have long been denied such access. Legalizing marijuana could unlock opportunities for Black entrepreneurs in the lucrative new market. Support by Kamala Harris could resonate with voters as part of a broader criminal justice and economic equity reform agenda.
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