{"id":29628,"date":"2026-05-26T00:37:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T00:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/paul-graham-says-warren-crypto-stance-was-own-goal\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T00:38:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T00:38:05","slug":"paul-graham-says-warren-crypto-stance-was-own-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/paul-graham-says-warren-crypto-stance-was-own-goal\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Graham says Warren crypto stance was own goal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-detail__content blocks\">\n<p class=\"is-style-lead\">Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, says Warren\u2019s anti-crypto crusade was a \u2018pure own-goal\u2019 for Democrats.<\/p>\n<div id=\"cn-block-summary-block_909069cf6b97799032ecb15910aee691\" class=\"cn-block-summary\">\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__nav tabs\">\n        <span class=\"tabs__item is-selected\">Summary<\/span>\n    <\/div>\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__content\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Paul Graham posted on X that Senator Elizabeth Warren\u2019s campaign against crypto was a \u201cpure own-goal\u201d that damaged Democrats without slowing the industry\u2019s growth.<\/li>\n<li>Warren did not seek reelection in 2026 as crypto gained mainstream political and institutional acceptance under a more favourable US regulatory regime.<\/li>\n<li>Graham previously called former SEC Chair Gary Gensler\u2019s approach \u201creally stupid,\u201d saying legitimate companies were stonewalled while actual frauds like FTX continued to operate freely.<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .cn-block-summary --><\/p>\n<p>Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/i\/status\/2058866401016742339\">posted<\/a> on X that Senator Elizabeth Warren\u2019s sustained campaign against crypto was a \u201cpure own-goal,\u201d characterising it as a political miscalculation that cost Democrats credibility without slowing the industry\u2019s development. Warren chose not to seek reelection in 2026 as the regulatory environment she had fought shifted sharply in crypto\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWarren\u2019s anti-crypto crusade was a pure own-goal,\u201d Graham posted, adding that the campaign had alienated voters and donors in a sector that moved toward mainstream institutional acceptance regardless.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Warren&#8217;s war on crypto was a pure own-goal by the Democrats. It achieved nothing, and it cost them enormously by alienating a large fraction of a powerful group who&#8217;d previously supported them. Look at the change from 2020 to 2024. <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FOrvWQ8lJn\">pic.twitter.com\/FOrvWQ8lJn<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Paul Graham (@paulg) <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/paulg\/status\/2058866401016742339?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">May 25, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Graham has been consistent in criticising anti-crypto politics<\/h2>\n<p>Graham\u2019s view is a continuation of a long-standing position. He previously described Gary Gensler\u2019s tenure at the SEC as \u201creally stupid,\u201d arguing the agency deliberately stonewalled legitimate businesses that wanted to comply with the law while failing to stop actual fraud.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p>\n<p>\u201cLegitimate companies that wanted to follow the rules, like Coinbase, were stonewalled or sued. This forced some of them to move offshore or stifle features,\u201d Graham said in an earlier post. He cited the FTX collapse as evidence that enforcement action fell on the wrong targets while genuine bad actors operated freely.<\/p>\n<p>The Warren framing follows a year in which the crypto industry spent more than $193 million in PAC money on congressional races, helped pass the GENIUS Act, and advanced the Clarity Act through the Senate Banking Committee on a 15-9 bipartisan vote. Crypto.news has covered the Clarity Act\u2019s compressed legislative window before the 2026 midterms.<\/p>\n<p>Crypto.news has also reported on AML enforcement overtaking securities classification as the primary regulatory risk axis in crypto, a shift that vindicates the argument that Warren-era securities-first enforcement targeted the wrong legal pressure point entirely. <\/p>\n<p>Crypto.news has also tracked CertiK\u2019s data showing AML fines exceeded $900 million in the first half of 2025 while SEC crypto enforcement actions collapsed by 97%.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, says Warren\u2019s anti-crypto crusade was a \u2018pure own-goal\u2019 for Democrats. Summary Paul Graham posted on X that Senator Elizabeth Warren\u2019s campaign against crypto was&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29630,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29628\/revisions\/29630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}