Kamala Harris vows to encourage AI and digital assets

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

In remarks to donors on Sunday, the United States Vice President and Democratic nominee for November’s election, Kamala Harris, promised she’ll be a tech-friendly president and committed her support to “industries of the future” like artificial intelligence (AI) and digital assets.

Speaking at a fundraising event at Cipriani Wall Street in New York, Harris publicly discussed digital assets for the first time and pledged to support innovative technologies.

“I will bring together labor, small business founders and innovators and major companies. We will partner together to invest in America’s competitiveness, to invest in America’s future. We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting our consumers and investors,” she told attendees.

“We will create a safe business environment with consistent and transparent rules of the road. We will invest in semiconductors, clean energy and other industries of the future, and we will cut needless bureaucracy.”

The comments, first reported by Bloomberg, seemed to go down, with the fundraiser raising $27 million for Harris’ campaign.

The Vice President’s first public reference to digital assets also received praise from industry figures, including Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams, who said of Harris’ remarks: “Biden has been terrible for crypto and tech. She is signaling her admin will approach it differently / be more pro innovation.”

Harris’ mention of digital assets came only a week after Republican candidate Donald Trump launched his latest “crypto” project. The former President has been far more active in courting the digital asset space.

Trump all-in on ‘crypto’

Trump has increasingly positioned himself as the “crypto candidate”—that is “crypto,” rather than “digital assets,” as the former U.S. president appears to almost exclusively talk in the language of digital currency instead of blockchain technology more broadly—having appeared at the BTC 2024 conference in July to deliver a keynote outlining his plans for the industry if elected.

Despite having previously called BTC a “scam” that he didn’t want competing against the dollar, back in 2021, Trump’s willingness to bend to the philosophy of any potentially lucrative single-issue donor pool has gradually led him to embrace the digital asset sector, or at least that section of it that finds itself in conflict with regulators and President Biden’s current administration.

Trump has now come full circle on the sector, telling attendees at the BTC 2024 conference in Nashville on July 27 that he would “immediately appoint a Bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council” and create a “national bitcoin stockpile” if elected.

More recently, Trump unveiled a new “crypto” project called World Liberty Financial (WLF), which is being led by his two sons Eric and Donald Jr, with his 18-year-old-son Barron also serving as the platform’s “visionary,” without any further explanation over what exactly that title means.

“Crypto is one of those things we have to do,” said Trump, during a September 16 live stream for the project on X, in which he appeared uncertain as to what WLF actually is.

“Whether we like it or not, I have to do it… It’s crypto, it’s AI, it’s some of the other things,” said Trump, in a typically confused and rambling speech that left some questioning whether he even knows how digital assets work despite being WFT’s “Chief Crypto Advocate.”

Donald Jr. and Eric also participated in the shambolic promotional event, which it was thought would provide more specifics on what shape their decentralized finance (DeFi) project will take, but instead listeners learned little more than that WLF would be “huge.”

According to the hazy mix of information provided by the duo, WLF will be a new cryptocurrency based on the Aave protocol and aimed at making the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world.”

They did little to elaborate on an earlier September 4 X post, in which WLF outlined its “mission” to:

“Make crypto and America great by driving the mass adoption of stablecoins and decentralized finance… We want U.S.-pegged stablecoins to remain the world’s settlement layer for the next 100 years… By spreading U.S.-pegged stablecoins around the world, we ensure that the U.S. dollar’s dominance continues.”

All in all, last week’s promo event was a dismal failure, and not just one of clarity but also of attendance. Trump promoted the event to his over 90 million X followers, yet only 170,000 people tuned in.

Fortunately for all the Trump nepo-execs who have been working so hard on the still-somewhat-ambiguous WLF, nothing says surefire hit like ‘convicted felon launches crypto project.’

In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek’s coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI.

Watch: Demonstrating the potential of blockchain’s fusion with AI