Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joins crypto fray as top politicians square off on industry’s future

“FDIC and SEC have no authority to wage an extra-legal war on crypto,” tweeted Kennedy, who officially launched his campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for president a little more than two weeks earlier.

Ellen Brown makes a strong case the FDIC/SEC war on crypto caused failures of SVB, Signature, and Silvergate banks. FDIC and SEC have no authority to wage an extra-legal war on crypto that leaves major banks as collateral damage. #Kennedy24https://t.co/HMZuW7Rr1H

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 2, 2023

A noted vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is a member of the political dynasty to which president John F. Kennedy also belonged. And he’s not the only prominent U.S. politician to spout off on cryptocurrencies in the past week—Republicans and Democrats alike have drawn lines in the sand as they’ve joined the increasingly raucous fray over the industry’s future.

Also on Tuesday, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, renewed his attack on CBDCs, or central bank digital currencies, after he signed legislation to counteract ESG investing in his state, or an investment strategy that tracks a business’s environmental, social, and governance effects.

“They want to make that the sole currency,” he said, referencing CBDCs and how “they”—presumably Democrats and the federal government—support its implementation. (That, however, is an inaccurate characterization of the Biden administration’s policy toward the technology, according to digital currency experts.)

“They don’t like crypto because they can’t control crypto,” DeSantis added.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Texas) similarly expressed skepticism of CDBCs less than a week ago. During the Bitcoin Policy Summit, he said he’s “concerned about the risk of a CBDC.” (In fact, Cruz submitted a bill to Congress in March to prevent the Federal Reserve from establishing a CBDC.)

“Their objective is precisely the opposite of a distributed ledger system,” he said during the summit, again presumably referencing the Biden administration and Democrats. “They want a centralized ledger that the government has complete visibility into and complete control of, and I think that is profoundly dangerous.” He noted, though, that he was “incredibly excited and incredibly bullish on Bitcoin specifically—crypto more broadly, but Bitcoin in particular.”

The comments from Kennedy, DeSantis, and Cruz join those of other national politicians, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has been one of crypto’s most vocal critics, at one point saying that she was looking to assemble an “anti-crypto army.” And Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chair of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, has at one point left open the possibility of a crypto ban.

That said, divisions on crypto aren’t just along party lines. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) believes in crypto’s potential for financial inclusion.

With the House of Representatives eyeing a sweeping new bill on crypto regulation, these rhetorical outbursts may just be beginning.