Two years ago, then-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy couldn’t stop praising the virtues of cryptocurrency.
Running to be the 2024 Republican nominee in the race for the White House, Ramaswamy sprinkled his stump speeches with praise for Bitcoin (BTC) and token mining operations while strongly standing against central bank digital currencies.
Now, presidential candidate Ramaswamy is running to be the next governor of Ohio. And while he isn’t exactly distancing himself from positions on digital assets, he isn’t putting them at the forefront of his campaign despite substantial exposure to crypto investments and the Buckeye state’s interests.
2023 X post on CBDCs. Source: Vivek Ramaswamy
In his 2024 presidential run, Ramaswamy was frequently issuing statements in opposition to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), praising Bitcoin (BTC) and its mining operations and often attending industry events as a keynote speaker.
After Donald Trump won the presidential race, he tapped Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, alongside Elon Musk. Ramaswamy left having never officially been a part of the administration.
Before announcing a run for the Ohio governor’s office in February 2025, he posted in support of the Ohio Strategic Cryptocurrency Reserve Act, a state bill that would allow the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve. In September 2025, Strive, the asset manager that he co-founded in 2022, announced plans to enter the digital asset market with a Bitcoin Bond ETF, focused on bonds issued by companies acquiring BTC.
Cointelegraph reached out to the Ramaswamy campaign but did not receive a response to repeated requests for an interview.
Crypto as a gubernatorial candidate
Following the official launch of his campaign, Ramaswamy initially kept up much of the same rhetoric he had espoused during his presidential run, also speaking at the Bitcoin for America conference in March and Bitcoin 2025 in May.
His campaign website accepts donations in crypto, and he has financial support from the co-founders of the Trump family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial: Chase Herro, Zak Folkman and Zachary Witkoff, all of whom donated the maximum allowable amount of $16,615 each.
Other entities associated with the crypto industry have also donated millions of dollars to Ramaswamy’s Super political action committee (PAC) “V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims,” including $20 million from Susquehanna International Group co-founder Jeff Yass, $6 million from NYDIG founder Ross Stevens, $5 million from billionaire Elon Musk and $5,000 from the Bitcoin Voter Project.
Ramaswamy has maintained his stake in Strive, which reported holding 23,156 BTC worth about $2 billion as of Aug. 28. An August filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed the candidate owned 5,693,897 shares in the company, worth more than $170 million as of Sept. 26. He also reported personally holding more than $1,000 in BTC and Ether (ETH) as of April through a Coinbase wallet.
Related: US midterm election mirrors 2024 as crypto PACs move into Ohio races
In September 2026, just weeks away from the election, Ramaswamy’s public statements on digital assets and related policies appear to have waned in contrast to his 2024 and even 2025 rhetoric. He had not addressed a Sept. 17 notice from Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announcing the acceptance of cryptocurrency to pay for state fees and services as of the time of publication.
What’s different for Ohio voters in 2026? Data centers, for one
Ohio voters could be part of the reason for Ramaswamy appearing to tone down the talk on crypto. The state was already the target of more than $40 million in spending by industry-aligned groups in 2024 to support Republican Bernie Moreno’s Senate run.
Two years ago, Moreno defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown, but history is beginning to repeat itself: Brown is now running against Republican Jon Husted for another chance in the Senate in next month’s election. The Fairshake PAC has pledged to initially spend $30 million opposing the Democrat again, already reporting $11 million in ad buys.
To be sure, a poll conducted by the Digital Currency Group in May 2024, months before the election, suggested that Ohio voters were “more negative towards crypto” compared to those in other US states, with 79% of the state’s respondents saying that they had never held crypto and 77% holding negative views on the digital currency.
Sentiment on data centers has also become a controversial campaign issue for Ohio politicians in 2026. According to the Pew Research Center, there were 166 data centers in Ohio as of April, giving the state more locations than any other in the country. It’s also home to many crypto mining operations, including Cipher Mining, Bitdeer and BIT Mining.
Public polling also showed that a majority of Ohio residents do not support data centers in their communities. Ramaswamy pledged in August that any center built in an Ohio community would result in no electricity cost for residents and lower property taxes, while his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, has proposed that “all costs for gas, water and electricity needs to be covered by data centers and their investors, not Ohio taxpayers or our communities.”
As of Sept. 22, an average of RealClearPolling data showed Acton with a one-point lead over Ramaswamy, making the race essentially a toss up. An event contract on Kalshi at last look on Monday had more than $2 million in bets and favored the Democratic candidate with a 66% chance of winning the governor’s race, with similar odds on a Polymarket contract.
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