Ban Crypto in politics: Stop the currency of corruption

The Case for a Total Crypto Ban in Politics

Crypto’s promise of "financial innovation" has become a smokescreen for old-fashioned corruption at the highest levels in our country. While cryptocurrency may have uses for ordinary citizens, ownership by elected officials presents unique and dangerous conflicts of interest that existing laws are powerless to stop. Here is why we need a total ban:

1. How Crypto Hides the Money Unlike a bank account, which is tied to your identity (name, address, social security number), cryptocurrency lives on a digital ledger called a blockchain.  Think of the blockchain as a public spreadsheet that lists every transaction ever made—but instead of names, it uses "wallet addresses" (long strings of random characters like 0x71C...).  This creates a dangerous loophole called pseudonymity. While we can see that money moved from one wallet to another, we often have no way of knowing who owns the wallet. A corporate lobbyist or foreign government can transfer millions of dollars to a politician’s digital wallet instantly, without a bank ever verifying their identity. The money arrives, the politician cashes it out, and the public is left in the dark.
2. The "Insider Trading 2.0" Loophole Direct transfers aren’t the whole story. Unlike stocks, which are tied to real world public company performance, markets for cryptocurrency move on hype and regulation—two things politicians directly control. When a Senator holds Bitcoin or Ethereum, every vote they cast on banking regulations, tax code changes, or SEC oversight directly impacts their personal net worth. In recent years 78 members of Congress were already found to have violated the STOCK Act with few real consequences; adding pseudoanonymous, instant crypto trading to the mix is making practical enforcement not just unlikely, but functionally impossible.^1,2,3
3. A Backdoor for Foreign Influence Cryptocurrency has rapidly become the preferred tool for dark money in politics. Unlike a bank transfer, crypto transactions are often anonymous, allowing foreign entities to funnel money to our politicians without oversight. Crypto-savvy politicians like President Trump are launching "celebrity coins" and "political meme coins" that have no real value, but let others spend in ways that massively inflate the value of the coins they’ve issued themselves, without any direct transfer. If a foreign government or corporate lobbyist wants to buy favor, they don't need to make a potentially illegal donation anymore—they can just buy millions of dollars of a politician's personal coin, driving up its value and enriching the official instantly. This is a national security threat that bypasses ALL our campaign finance laws.^4,5,6,7,8 
4. Incentivizing Financial Instability Elected officials should be focused on stabilizing the economy, not gambling on its volatility. The crypto market is rife with fraud, wash trading, and "pump and dump" schemes that have cost everyday Americans billions.³ When politicians hold these assets, they have a perverse incentive to block necessary consumer protections to keep the "line going up." – and through the GENIUS Act and more legislative proposals, they’re doing so. We cannot have the referees betting on the game.^9,10 
5. The "Mining" Conflict It isn't just about crypto trades; it's about the infrastructure behind them, too. Eric Trump’s company claims to own 2% of global bitcoin production capacity.These operations carry significant costs for all of us; they consume massive amounts of electricity, straining our power grids and driving up energy costs for working families. When politicians motivated in part by personal investment in this infrastructure vote on energy bills or environmental regulations, they may be voting to protect their own passive income streams, not their constituents.^11,12
6. A Growing Problem Unbelievably, instead of dealing with conflicts posed by crypto ownership, our law-makers are heeding industry demands to make it worse. The only legislation they’re passing right now will lower scrutiny and regulation of cryptocurrencies and enabling even greater abuse.^13,14

The Solution

We need a hard line. The Stop TRUMP in Crypto Act was introduced to address the glaring conflicts in the Executive Branch, but we must go further, ensure ALL politicians, current and future, Democrat and Republican, at every level—are equally banned from crypto abuse. 

We are calling for a blanket ban on the ownership of all digital financial assets for:

• The President and Vice President
• All Members of Congress
• Cabinet Members
• Federal Political Appointees
• Senior Congressional Staff
• And their immediate family members.