Meet Washington’s ‘Crypto Queen,’ a Republican senator who owns $100,000 in bitcoin and

Sen. Cynthia Lummis is known on Capitol Hill as the “Crypto Queen.”

The Republican from Wyoming has earned a reputation as a cryptocurrency educator in Congress, demystifying and advocating for the technology among her older colleagues.

She’s a self-described HODLer, crypto-speak for someone who invests in bitcoin as a way to get in before it takes over larger swaths of the financial system. In June, she introduced a bill, alongside Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, to some of the first federal guardrails for the growing and largely unregulated world of decentralized finance.

“There are groups who want no regulation. There are other groups that want to completely ban digital assets,” a spokesperson for Sen. Lummis told Insider. “We need to meet somewhere in the middle to make sure that bad actors are not taking advantage of the lack of regulatory clarity, but also that innovators can continue to develop new technologies that make our world better.”

From Wyoming to Washington

Sen. Lummis (pronounced as though it rhymes with “hummus,”) served as the state treasurer in her home state of Wyoming from 1999 to 2007 before winning the Wyoming seat in the US House. She served as vice chair of former President Donald Trump’s presidential transition team after he won the 2016 presidential election.

In 2020, Sen. Lummis, 66, became the first woman to be elected senator from the state of Wyoming. That same year, she also became the Senate’s first crypto owner.

Lummis bought bitcoin in 2013, and she reported in October 2021 that it amounted to somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000. She told Protocol last week, however, that she put her bitcoin holdings in a blind trust after receiving blowback for owning the digital assets.

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