A Texas spat over energy for cryptocurrency has split the state’s Republicans, and their disagreement highlights how the technology is scrambling U.S. politics — even as it draws in waterfalls of cash and a bear hug by former President Donald Trump. Trump recently has been overtly courting the crypto industry. Hours after meeting with executives of leading bitcoin mining firms, Trump declared on his Truth Social platform last week, “Biden’s hatred of Bitcoin only helps China, Russia, and the Radical Communist Left,” and: “We want all the remaining Bitcoin to be MADE IN THE USA!!! It will help us be ENERGY DOMINANT.” It’s a flip for a politician who once hated bitcoin, deriding it as “based on thin air,” but fits in with Trump’s broader play for the rightward-drifting Silicon Valley donor class. Other candidates with a populist bent appear to be chasing the same constituency: a quintessential Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. campaign position is putting the entire U.S. budget on the blockchain. But when it comes to Republicans overall, it’s not obvious that crypto is likely to win the day, especially at the state level. In Texas, the Republican-controlled Senate is digging in against the technology. The argument there touched off after the state’s grid operator testified last week that energy needs would balloon within the coming years and nearly double to a peak of 150,000 megawatts due in large part to crypto miners and data centers. That led the state’s Republican lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick to call the technologies “very niche,” saying, “We need to take a close look at those two industries. They produce very few jobs compared to the incredible demands they place on our grid.” This was a departure from the welcome Texas Republicans initially offered the crypto sector, whose miners flocked to the state in search of abundant energy and lax regulations. Patrick’s skepticism follows a pattern of lawmakers from both parties in states where most U.S. crypto mining is clustered — New York, Georgia, and now Texas — souring on the sector for its growing energy demands. So, who’s risking more, the crypto-courters or its new opponents? That depends on how much power its supporters will wield in the upcoming election. There’s an argument among proponents that the industry has amassed a sizable constituency: a poll commissioned by the exchange Coinbase that found one in five Americans own digital currencies. Another industry-commissioned poll shows a quarter of voters indicating they actively weigh candidates’ positions on digital assets before making a voting decision. Scott Johnsson, a Van Buren Capital partner and expert in digital asset legal issues, said that the figures at the highest end are “completely unreasonable” and overstate the number of voters who consider crypto a primary issue. But he still believes “there’s a material constituency here that feels quite aggrieved,” pointing instead to the success of a new group, Stand with Crypto PAC, in reaching a membership of 1 million Americans this month. That figure, he said, can be thought of as a floor for how many voters really care about crypto. He argues it’s on track to reach around 3 percent in many states. In a closely divided electorate, that’s not irrelevant. “It’s a surprisingly large number,” said Johnsson. “In terms of how effective this grassroots movement is, and how motivated this particular group will be to vote a specific way, it might just be signups and maybe there’s not a huge effect, but we'll end up having the first experiment on that this coming election.” Even if Trump is just mining the margins for votes, Texas Christian University political scientist Grant Ferguson, who has researched the demographics of crypto buyers, said the strategy could still be worthwhile. He described the typical profile of an American crypto owner based on his own survey results: “It’s a young Latin [American] or Black guy. He probably is a little more risk-friendly than average. He’s less religious. He’s not particularly real liberal, real conservative, and he’s maybe ideologically somewhere in the middle. He’s concerned about government spending and inflation.” That, Ferguson said, sounds like the demographic candidates from all parties are looking for: the swing voter. | 
