Does Kamala Harris think crypto is racist?

There have been plenty of accusations made against cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin over the years. It is too flimsy, you can’t buy anything with it, and it is wildly volatile. All fair enough. But is it racist? That appears to be the view of Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.

The vice president has unveiled a set of policies designed to help black men, an important group of voters who have been showing worrying signs of drifting towards her rival Donald Trump. It included pledges to improve healthcare, education and to legalize marijuana, presumably on the grounds they think that black guys smoke a lot of weed. It also included a pledge “to protect cryptocurrency investments so black men who make them know their investment is safe.”

Seriously? There are two odd things about Harris’s pitch to black men. To start with, a plan to protect cryptocurrencies is completely barmy. The whole point of bitcoin, Ethereum and any other type of web-based cash is that it is completely unregulated. Any scheme that tried to protect investors will either be completely irrelevant, or else will end up costing the government billions of dollars in compensation. Investments can’t be “protected” because they are inherently risky. That is surely the entire point.

Next, why do black men in particular need protection for crypto? Harris’s plan appears to suggest that they are somehow uniquely susceptible to crypto scams, an argument for which there is precisely zero evidence, and which might well be slightly racist. Unless she is planning a scheme that bails out black men, but not black women, Hispanics or whites, when their investments go wrong, it does not make any sense. 

The truth is that Harris’s crypto policy is just weird. Harris is proving a formidable campaigner, and a far better candidate than her dismal record as vice president would suggest. Yet many of her ideas are an incoherent mess. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Harris will be a very poor president — even if black guys won’t have to worry about their bitcoin while she is in the White House. 

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.