Kamala Harris Is Using Coinbase Commerce to Accept Crypto Donations, CFO Says

Coinbase's chief financial officer, Alesia Haas, said on Wednesday that U.S. vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is using the firm's Commerce platform to accept crypto donations.

Kamala Harris is using Coinbase Commerce to accept cryptocurrency donations for her presidential campaign, according to Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas.

Haas made the claim during a conversation with Citigroup’s director of payments, Peter Christiansen, at Citi’s 2024 Global TMT Conference in New York, a recording of which Fortune has reviewed.

The claim follows a report by The Block that Coinbase was in conversation with the Harris campaign. Harris’s campaign has not yet returned a request for comment.

Under President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party has largely been less supportive of crypto than Republicans. But recent lobbying efforts could be set to change that.

“She is accepting crypto donations. She's using Coinbase Commerce now to accept crypto for her own campaign," Haas said, referring to the company’s platform of merchants it has operated since 2018.

Harris’s official fundraising site does not currently show the integration, and advocacy group Crypto4Harris told Fortune that they were not aware of Harris accepting cryptocurrency.

In June, a super PAC, Future Forward, announced it had raised $50 million to support Harris. We've reached out to Coinbase to reconfirm Haas's claim and await response.

If true, the development would follow on from what Haas says is “elevated policy spend” by Coinbase going into what she says is a rare opportunity.

“We're in a unique precipice where we might get regulatory clarity in the US.”

In June, Coinbase made its first contribution to Fairshake, a political action committee set up to support candidates that support crypto. Throughout the second quarter of this year Haas says “incremental” contributions were made to the PAC, “furthering support of just general policy efforts into Q3.”

As of June, the super PAC had reportedly won 32 of the 34 elections it was involved in. “We are seeing those dollars have impact in those elections,” Haas says.

“She has a huge opportunity. We’re cautiously optimistic," Haas added. "She has not rolled out the details yet, but she has made overtures that she would like to drive crypto legislation.”

Meanwhile, Coinbase CEO Brain Armstrong has reportedly said that the company has donated directly to neither Presidential campaign.

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