Republican Senate challengers gathered at a crypto event in New York City yesterday to make the case for a light touch on crypto policy.

Why it matters: We're at a political inflection point in this election, with Democrats suddenly striking a conciliatory tone and Republicans reminding blockchain denizens which party's always been there for them.

• Case in point: Semafor reported last week that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) now says she never had a problem with a little crypto trading.
• And of course, Vice President Kamala Harris recently name-checked the industry as one to support, albeit with caution.

Yes, but: The No. 1 thing that the government needs to do is get out of entrepreneurs' way, Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno told Axios in a one-on-one yesterday after his panel.

Zoom in: Crypto has a tech side and a money side, Moreno argued. "The tech crypto should have virtually no government interference at all," he said.

• "The money crypto, there's where you regulate it very transparently with rules of the road that are understandable, that are easily enforceable. And you separate those two things."
• Congress passed mild laws for the web in the 90s and "the internet blossomed in America," he said.

Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers argued that he knows firsthand how important crypto will be "if we make sure that it is developed here, innovated here and companies can be here."

• A former FBI agent, the former congressman said he first encountered the technology when it was being used to buy drugs on the original dark web marketplace, the Silk Road.
• Rogers pushed back on the idea of blockchain's utility for crime, saying that it's fairly easy to follow the money on chain, but it will be much harder if the companies building for it operate out of countries (he named China) that aren't aligned with the U.S.

What they're saying: If the industry is left to the Democrats, Rogers cautioned, their approach will be "to overregulate, regulate and fine."

There's a "zero percent" chance that the SEC's fights against companies like Coinbase and Uniswap Labs will be dropped if Harris wins the election, at least not to the thinking of Joshua Rivera, general counsel at Blockchain Capital.

Why it matters: SEC chair Gary Gensler has become a political lightning rod.

Between the lines: On a panel about the U.S. policy outlook for digital assets yesterday at Messari Mainnet, I raised the prospect of cases dropping under a friendlier administration.

• "The expectation is that the Senate is going to flip to red. She's not going to remove Gensler and try to appoint another chair under a Republican Senate," Rivera said, referring to Harris. "From my perspective, it's a net negative."

The other side: One other panelist saw a chance for Gensler to go in a Harris administration.

• It's an idea that's been raised by major Democratic donors on Wall Street, who have been pushing Harris to replace the SEC chair, along with FTC chair Lina Khan, Bloomberg reported last month.
• (The last panelist broke the tie and sided with Rivera.)

The bottom line: All three agreed that a spirit of bipartisanship, long term, is the only sensible path for the industry, regardless.

World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance project supported by the Trump Organization, is open for sign-ups from accredited investors and people outside the U.S. as of yesterday

Reality check: Will anyone tell you what you are signing up for? No.

• This tweet is all that's new, that anyone knows.

Inside the room: One rumor is that the project is a fork of the biggest money market on Ethereum and other chains, Aave.

• Yesterday at Messari Mainnet, I asked Stani Kulechov, CEO of Avara, the company that launched and manages the Aave codebase, if that was true. He said it was not an Aave fork.

Details: Like most crypto projects, Aave is open source, and lots of folks have tried to compete with it by copying its code. It's never really worked.

• It's one thing to fiddle with some code and post it on chain, but that doesn't get you $12 billion worth of liquidity.

Coinbase and Morning Consult released a new poll yesterday showing that many crypto owners like country music.

Why it matters: Part of the point of the poll was to undermine the notion that only young techie men buy cryptocurrency.

• Also noted: 18% of owners are moms with kids at home, and 57% try to conserve electricity.

What we're watching: Crypto owners were split between who they intend to support for president: Harris and former President Trump both got 47%.

• But 78% of likely crypto voters said they care about candidates' interest in the asset class, and 14% expect to be voting for the first time.

Between the lines: The data comes from two rounds of polling in August.

• One of 1,577 crypto owners and 10,771 adults eligible to vote in the U.S. and another of 789 such owners and 2,477 adults. The first had a margin of error of +/- 1% and the second was +/- 2%.

🪦 The SEC won a case against a company that shut down three years ago. (CoinDesk)

🔬 Japan is looking to review, and possibly update, its rules for cryptocurrency. (Bloomberg)