Shannon Bray, a veteran of the U.S. Navy and North Carolinian Navy, hopes the second time and a particularly sparkling memecoin will be the charm of her political aspirations.
Previously, Bray ran for Senate in 2020 with no luck. This time around, the 49 year-old dyed-in-the-wool Libertarian honed his agenda to focus on cryptocurrencies — with the Shiba Inu digital coin taking center stage, and China’s crypto mining crackdown the impetus for his ambitions. He is part of a vanguard of pro-crypto politicians looking to use the burgeoning digital coin movement to find their way to Washington.
Bray’s call to politics hit him back in 2019, the candidate explained to Yahoo Finance in a recent interview. He had been on leave for two months as a cybersecurity analyst at the US Department of Defense thanks to what turned out to be the longest government shutdown in the country’s history.
Fed up and “not getting paid,” Bray discovered a North Carolina seat in the Senate had opened up and, temporarily without work, thought he might be able to fix the inefficiencies of government at the legislative level.
In what he called an “eye-opening” experience that “hooked” him to politics, Bray received a paltry 3% of the vote in an attempt to challenge incumbent Republican Thom Tillis. While some might have deemed it “an embarrassing loss” (his exact words), Bray maintained that his first act of running for the Libertarian party kept open ballot access for his party’s voters.
His positions include being anti-war, pro-immigration, aware of cybersecurity issues like ransomware, and adamant about downsizing the federal government even as a worker who has spent most of his adult life working for the government. federal.
Bray does not claim to be a cryptocurrency expert. But his status as a Shiba Inu holder (SHIB-USD) since September made him something of an overnight celebrity, which spurred a donation he made to struggling veterans.
Bray knew about Bitcoin since the early 2010s. It wasn’t until the summer of 2021 while on vacation with his family that he realized he needed to make the asset class a central part of his campaign.
“I had just put $ 30,000 in Bitcoin (BTC-USD) and Ethereum (ETH-USD). I wake up the next morning and am below $ 5,000,” Bray recalls. It was June 2021, when the Chinese government had banned Bitcoin mining, causing the entire market to spiral.
Over time, Bray learned that the miners would recover if they moved to the United States. Further out, he saw the price of his assets rebound.
“Once I saw Bitcoin bounce back like this, I knew crypto had to be part of our policy on the world stage. If China can’t take it down, that’s a beautiful story,” said Bray.
Hopefully we can have more crypto representatives in Washington, DC to make relations more friendly for retail investors. We definitely don’t like to see regulation squashing innovation.”
Over the past year, a new breed of crypto-focused political candidates have sprung up across the country. Just days ago, New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams agreed to take his first three pay checks in bitcoin in a bid to promote the industry in the Big Apple, and challenge Miami’s growing clout in the sector.
In Ohio, Senate candidates on both sides of the aisle have shown their friendship with digital coins. Morgan Harper, an Ohio attorney running as a Democrat recently stated that Bitcoin and crypto might provide a powerful business model for more evenly “distributing economic power.”
And Josh Mandel, former Ohio state treasurer and Republican candidate, made a Twitter appeal for voters to start “standing up for crypto.” Meanwhile, Matthew Diemer, an Ohio Democrat running for the state’s 16th district, hosts the Decrypt Daily podcast.
Like other investors, advocates and people working in the cryptocurrency industry, Bray is concerned about the crypto provisions of the Infrastructure Bill, as well as the broader patchwork of crypto regulation. -currencies by American agencies.
“Hopefully, we can get more crypto-representatives in Washington, D.C. to make relations more friendly for retail investors,” Bray told Yahoo Finance. “We definitely don’t like to see regulation squashing innovation.”
Indeed, the cryptocurrency industry has stepped up its lobbying efforts in recent months, a partial reflection of the immense fortunes created by market players. Those include some of the word’s top hedge funds and venture capitalist firms, according to JMP Securities Director of Research, Devin Ryan.
“This creates a cycle where well-known and connected VCs and institutional investors add support from the industry, which to me serves as a counterweight to some of the critics, maybe even some in high positions,” said Ryan at Yahoo Finance in a recent interview.
“I’m looking for the people who don’t normally go to political rallies. People who maybe love crypto but have no passion for politics,” Bray said in an interview, wearing a hoodie. Shiba Inu. “Those are the people I’m trying to reach now. The best way to reach them is through Twitter or anything online, where people are trading,” he added.
The rallying cry of the SHIB army
Bray bought Dogecoin and Shiba Inu coin on a lark at first earlier in the year, but things got more serious on September 11, when he plunked down $700 into Shiba Inu coin (a little over 100 million SHIB). He intended to donate all funds to struggling veterans if the coin’s price exceeded the 1 cent threshold.
Catching wind of the project, an online community of self-proclaimed “SHIB ARMY” members quickly boosted the cause across social media. Shortly after posting his donation on Twitter, two other investors sent SHIB tokens to the wallet, tripling the donation.
“It kind of went viral from there and a week later, SHIB started taking off,” Bray recalled.
From mid-September to the end of October, the price of SHIB increased, and with it, the number of Bray’s online subscribers increased. By October 27, the dog-themed token’s price reached an all time high, gaining more than 1000% in value. Since that high, the price has collapsed to settle at a loss of 36% below the high.
Since making his SHIB donation public, Bray’s Twitter following has surged to over 35,000. From conversations he has had on Twitter, his followers live all over the world, United States and India to Brazil and Argentina and are true believers in Shiba Inu.
“There’s a lot of hope. They’re hoping to see it reach a dollar. I don’t really see that happening, but I guess the dream is alive,” he admitted.
The supply of Shiba Inu coins is so vast, its price per token at its all time high two weeks ago still amounted to less than one ten thousandth of a penny. Bray claimed that the microscopic value of cryptocurrency per token prompts people with less disposable income to invest in the cryptocurrency markets.
Critics say that the memecoin’s price has nothing to do with its potential upside. Nonetheless, the perception – false or not – of its affordability seems to have played into the investment momentum of SHIB.
But given its excessive supply of coins, SHIB’s market capitalization would need to be orders of magnitude greater than the entire cryptocurrency market to meet such a lofty goal.
On the flip side, Bray’s intention behind his donation to raise awareness of the high rates of homelessness and suicide among U.S. veterans has garnered praise. The week before he created his SHIB donation, he’d discovered a friend he’d previously served alongside in the Navy had taken his own life after dealing with homelessness.
“I was busy. I hadn’t spoken to him in a few years… It really pissed me off,” Bray said.
A Military Times story published earlier this year states that Veterans make up 6% of the country’s population, but 8% of its homeless population. According to a 2018 study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Services, veterans with a history of homelessness are more than 5 times more likely to kill themselves than those who are not.
The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) shows that 6,291 U.S. veterans died by suicide in 2019, a rate of 31.6 per 100,000 people compared to the national average of 18. Although that number dropped significantly from 2018 to 2019, since the pandemic, the rate of homelessness among veterans is expected to have increased.
The gains in Bray’s SHIB donation since September 11 now places the donations value around $16,000 as of the time of writing. Two weeks ago, when the SHIB price surpassed Dogecoin (DOGE-USD), hitting an all-time high, funds stood at $ 26,788.
Bray has decided to tack back on his less realistic commitment to donate the funds once SHIB crosses the penny line. Now he plans to donate the funds in his next election cycle to Congress.
“I’m hoping in a year, it will be substantial,” he said.
