Is NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Bad For Crypto?

Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral primary election on June 24, which has since caused a stir among the crypto industry’s upper crust.

Mamdani will face off against incumbent Mayor Eric Adams in November, and it’s clear that many in the crypto industry are uneasy about the prospect of a Mamdani victory. Executives and pro-crypto government officials alike have decried his policy proposals, with critics equating his left-leaning policies to Soviet collectivism.

Mamdani laid out many specific policy positions, several of which were further left than the Democratic Party norm, but he has remained relatively silent on cryptocurrency. His opponent, Adams, in contrast, is promoting it at great length.

With the general election growing closer, observers are now weighing if Mamadani will challenge the crypto industry — or if he even can.

What does Mamdani think about crypto?

In the days following the election, major crypto figures like Gemini crypto exchange co-founder Tyler Winklevoss, as well as US AI and crypto czar David Sacks, offered a scathing critique of Mamdani.

Tyler Winklevoss called New York City a “broken kleptocracy” under Democratic rule and, regarding Mamdani’s surging popularity in the mayoral election, said, “It appears things will have to get worse in NYC before they get better.”

Sacks called on Silicon Valley, which is in California, to “wake up” to the supposed rising tide of communism in New York. 

During his campaign, Mamdani outlined a number of policies that raised eyebrows among moderate Democrats and conservative opponents alike, but he has offered little in regard to how he will approach regulating the city’s crypto industry.

The few public statements he has made were relatively tame. In 2023, a year after the implosion of the Terra stablecoin ecosystem and the broader crypto crash that followed, New York Attorney General Letitia James called for more consumer protections within the stablecoin industry.

Mamdani, who was then a member of the New York City Assembly, agreed.

Such statements were hardly rare for the time, when customers from collapsed or bankrupted firms like Celsius, Terra and FTX were left out to dry. 

Two years later, crypto would only come up in his campaign in the context of his opponent, former Mayor Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani took issue with Cuomo advising crypto exchange OKX…