Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta and a member of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s global advisory council, will join President Joe Biden’s campaign for the 2024 United States Presidential election.
According to a June 26 report from Ebony, Lance Bottoms said she would be joining the Biden campaign as a senior adviser. She served as the mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022 and joined the Coinbase advisory council in April 2024, having left an advisory position at the White House in 2023.
The Hill reported on June 27 that Lance Bottoms would remain with Coinbase through President Biden’s campaign, which is expected to end in November when U.S. voters go to the ballot boxes. The news outlet reported that the former mayor said cryptocurrency was a “nonpolitical and unifying issue.”
Whether Lance Bottoms will advise the Biden campaign on cryptocurrency-related issues is unclear. Reports have suggested that the U.S. President was considering accepting crypto contributions from supporters and meeting with lawmakers to discuss digital assets. Cointelegraph reached out to the Biden campaign for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Crypto and politics
On June 26, Lance Bottoms spoke at one of Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto events in Atlanta ahead of the debate between President Biden and Donald Trump. The advocacy group has called on users to contact CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash to request they address crypto-related issues during the debate. President Biden and Trump will have a 90-minute debate with a studio audience.
“Atlanta has a thriving Black-owned blockchain community,” Lance Bottoms said at the Stand With Crypto Atlanta event, according to The Hill. “Crypto offers an opportunity for communities that are often unbanked and underbanked to strengthen their financial freedom.”
Related: Ex-Florida congressperson joins Coinbase Global Advisory Council
In February, former U.S. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney said he would step down from his position at the Coinbase global advisory council if President Biden nominated him to represent the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Maloney was one of the original advisory members on the council when Coinbase founded it in May 2023.
Since Coinbase launched Stand With Crypto in 2023, the group’s political action committee (PAC) has grown to have more than one million advocates and is actively supporting or working against candidates at the state and federal levels. Coinbase is one of the principal backers behind the Fairshake Super PAC, which has launched attack ads against many politicians rated as anti-crypto on Stand With Crypto.
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