By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist NYT

“Then there’s cryptocurrency, which isn’t quite like other parts of the technology sector. Whatever you think of Musk, Tesla produces a real product with real uses; so, in a different way, does PayPal, the initial source of Thiel’s vast wealth. Crypto, by contrast, remains a solution in search of a problem.

But a couple of months ago, there was Bernie Moreno, the pro-crypto Republican candidate for Ohio’s other Senate seat, at a bitcoin convention asking, “Are you sick of these politicians who say bitcoin is for drug dealing and money laundering?” Actually, no: I’m sick of the fact that crypto’s most obvious and ready use is indeed for drug dealing and money laundering, having tried and failed to find significant legal uses.

Yet crypto is marketed as a revolutionary technology, and some of its biggest boosters are among the tech bros who’ve been lurching to the right, so it makes sense to put crypto’s political role in the same basket.

And crypto is playing a big role in the 2024 election. Axios writes that according to an August report from Public Citizen, “The crypto industry accounts for almost half the money contributed by corporations to political action committees so far in 2024.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/26/opinion/cryptocurrency-election-moreno-vance.html