Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C. publicly acknowledged the role that the crypto industry had in unseating former chairman Sherrod Brown, a longtime banking progressive, from the Senate.
Scott’s comments, made at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium just ahead of the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole Summit, were a stunning acknowledgement of the role that crypto money has played in policymaking in Washington as Congress has made some of the most consequential laws regarding payments and banking since Dodd-Frank.
Banks took some large losses in the stablecoin bill, and are currently pushing back against certain provisions in an upcoming market structure bill concerning how stablecoin issuers and special purpose depository institutions can take up traditional banking activities without the oversight that comes with being an actual bank. Kraken, one of the cosponsors of Tuesday’s crypto symposium, has a Special Purpose Depository Institution affiliate headquartered in Wyoming.
“Thank you, to all of y’all, for getting rid of Sherrod Brown,” Scott said to the audience.
“Literally, the industry put Bernie Moreno in the Senate, and he’s on the banking committee,” Scott said later.
Brown is Scott’s predecessor as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Bernie Moreno, his opponent in Ohio, drew support from the crypto industry in part because of Brown’s ability to hold up legislation that would be favorable to the industry in the Senate.
Brown has already said he will run for the Senate again in 2026, this time seeking now-Vice President JD Vance’s old Senate seat in the midterms, a special election that could decide control of the Senate but for a term that would last only two years.
It’s not clear if the crypto industry will ramp up their campaign spending against Brown again in the 2026 Ohio Senate race.
“Fire the legislators that are in your way,” Scott said. “You guys did a really good job of that this last election cycle. You elected some Democrats who are good on the issues, you elected a lot of Republicans who are leading on the issue.”
He connected the election spending and the crypto industry’s powerful role in 2024 races directly to the kind of bills that Scott has ushered through the banking committee.
“That kind of agnostic approach to getting the job done is incredibly helpful,” Scott said. “I would recommend you elect more Republicans and Democrats at the end of the day, getting people who care enough about the future and not just the present makes America the crypto capital of the world.”
