In brief
- Crypto leaders rebuked Democrats after the party’s official X account posted “yikes” with a crypto crash graphic, calling it insensitive to investor losses across party lines.
- The backlash came as over $2.6B in positions were liquidated in 24 hours, with Bitcoin down 8% to $64,752.
- Executives and policy advocates warned that partisan mockery of market pain could hurt Democrats with crypto voters, as digital asset legislation advances before midterms.
Crypto industry leaders fired back at Democrats on Friday after the party’s official X account posted “yikes” alongside a graphic mocking crypto market losses, drawing accusations of partisan insensitivity as Bitcoin plunged and investors lost billions.
The Democratic Party’s tweet featured a chart showing Bitcoin’s slide alongside an image of President Donald Trump wearing a MAGA hat, triggering immediate backlash from executives, lawyers, and government advisors who said the message dismissed widespread financial pain affecting investors across party lines.
The controversial social media activity came as Bitcoin dropped 8.1% over the past 24 hours to $65,729, down 33.1% from a year earlier, according to CoinGecko data.
“The sad thing about this tweet is that you’re gloating in a lot of Democrats’ painful financial losses right now,” Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long replied to the post. “You do know that many Democrats own crypto too, right?”
The crypto market saw some $2.6 billion in liquidations over the past 24 hours, with $2.13 billion coming from long positions, according to Coinglass data.
Bitcoin led liquidations with $1.35 billion, including $1.1 billion from long positions, while Ethereum saw $443 million in long positions liquidated.
A partisan issue?
The dispute shows rising partisan tension around crypto policy, with industry voices cautioning that mocking market pain could alienate pro-crypto voters.
“Probably not the message you want to be sending to the crypto community before midterms,” Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, responded to the Democrats’ tweet.
Meanwhile, Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss quoted the post, saying, “It was always political persecution.”
Pro-XRP attorney John Deaton, who is currently running for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, connected the losses to broader economic mismanagement by both parties.
“If career politicians from both parties didn’t cause a $38T debt by running $2T annual deficits for decades, recklessly creating money out of thin air, devaluing our currency to the point inflation has priced regular people out of the economy—maybe they wouldn’t turn to crypto to build wealth,” he wrote.
Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci called the Democrat post a “stupid tweet,” saying “the best thing Trump has going for him is the incompetence of Democrats on this topic.”
Democrats vs Trump
The Democrats’ post followed a tweet from California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office, which said, “Trump is crashing the crypto markets faster than he’d crash an Epstein party,” further inflaming partisan tensions around crypto.
In December, Newsom launched a website tracking what he called Trump’s “criminal cronies,” spotlighting pardoned crypto figures including Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht.
On Wednesday, Representative Ro Khanna launched an investigation into a $500 million UAE investment in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto company, questioning whether the deal influenced U.S. policy on AI chip exports.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has repeatedly warned about Trump’s conflicts of interest in crypto, noting the family has amassed over $1.2 billion in financial gains from digital assets since his second term began, while also opposing proposals to allow crypto in 401(k) retirement plans.
Decrypt has reached out to the Democratic Party for comment.
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