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Bitcoin advocate Ian Calderon runs for California governor
Crypto Trends

Bitcoin advocate Ian Calderon runs for California governor

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On September 23, Ian Calderon joined the Gubernatorial Elections in California. He vowed to ensure that Bitcoin would be on the state’s balance sheet if he were elected. However, many in the Bitcoin community are skeptical.

Summary

  • Calderon has a multi-year track record of advocating for crypto and Bitcoin in the California legislature.
  • Calderon is trying to appeal to both Republicans and Democrats.
  • The announcement of his gubernatorial campaign sparked mixed reactions from the crypto community.

Who is Calderon?

Calderon, a Democrat, drew scrutiny last week with his pro-crypto stance. Critics say his Bitcoin narrative is a PR stunt. Yet, others found Calderon’s bid noteworthy, as it signifies the rising bipartisan support for Bitcoin.

Calderon served three terms in the California Legislature before quitting in 2020. He was the first millennial elected to the Legislature and the youngest majority leader in the history of the California State Assembly. 

Among his Bitcoin-related initiatives is one aimed at pulling crypto out of the gray zone. After all, Calderon is the author of the 2018 bill AB 2658, which created California’s Blockchain Working Group. It aimed to explore the potential use of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, collaborate with policymakers to define the legal status of cryptocurrencies, and assess possible risks.

Between 2020 and 2022, he contributed to the Blockchain Working Group’s roadmap and began working on a bill aimed at making Bitcoin a legal tender in California. 

Calderon saw the bill as groundbreaking legislation for the entire country. He said in 2022:

“It’s important that we’re making this effort in California because of the national implications it will have. The goal here is to have a national model piece of legislation that can work anywhere in the country.”

It’s worth saying that despite Calderon’s claim about Bitcoin as legal tender, the bill doesn’t contain the words “Bitcoin” or “cryptocurrency.” Instead, it provides a pretty vague definition of “virtual currency” meant as a means of payment for goods and services. Calderon offered to launch pilot programs to tackle the bill’s legal ambiguity for the local cities. The bill has not seen much progress since November 2022.

Calderon’s platform

Calderon’s announcement was accompanied by a video clip in which he outlined the problems he plans to tackle as governor. He mentions growing gas and grocery prices and the housing crisis:

“Childcare costs are out of control, paychecks aren’t keeping up with the cost of living, gas prices are the highest in the nation, and now, buying a home is becoming out of reach.”

Additionally, Calderon notes that too many homes in California are owned by corporations and foreign investors, “preventing local families from attaining full ownership opportunities.”  

Calderon presents himself as a Democrat who believes in common-sense solutions and does not always agree with his party. The complete list of his initiatives is available on his campaign’s website, Ian For Governor.

He barely mentions Bitcoin in the video; however, on the day when he announced his governor bid, Calderon took to an X to state that it’s time to make California an undisputed leader on Bitcoin.

California has always been a leader on technology. It’s time for us to get back to our roots and make California the undisputed leader on Bitcoin.

— Ian Calderon (@IanCalderon) September 23, 2025

Reaction

A long-time ally, Dennis Porter, the Satoshi Act Fund CEO, has been teasing his 200,000-plus follower base with an important announcement for days.

When it turned out that he just wanted to inform his followers that Calderon is running for governor of California, many of his followers said the announcement wasn’t worth the hype.

Some of them equate Democrats with a war on crypto and don’t believe Calderon is a genuine Bitcoin supporter.

Most of them are unaware of Calderon’s track record as a Bitcoin advocate. Seemingly, the fact that the biggest crypto bills of 2025 were bipartisan doesn’t matter to them either.

Is this really “it”? Dennis…. I love what you do, but the hype was uncalled for.

— G$ (@Gendog52) September 23, 2025

Other critics recalled Calderon’s uncles, Ron and Tom, who were involved in California political life. In 2016, they were convicted on public corruption charges.

The adverse reactions stemming from Porter’s announcement spread on the comment sections of the announcements made by Calderon himself and several crypto influencers.

The latter includes The Wolf of All Streets podcast host Scott Melker and Wendy O, who is the host of the biggest female-run Bitcoin YouTube show, “The O Show.” Some expressed support for Calderon’s ambitions but urged him to stop his affiliation with Porter.

Dude… If you want to be serious drop working with @Dennis_Porter_ you might be a good guy but this guy hyped everyone up over a big announcement. It wasn’t a political announcement…

— ²¹²Johyo | CroCrash (@Johyo_cro) September 23, 2025

Nevertheless, many other people greeted an openly pro-Bitcoin candidate from the Democratic Party, hoping that Calderon could oppose fellow Democrats who go against Bitcoin.

This is the point of the announcement. Democratic pro-bitcoin voices can push back on the elizabeth warren camp in ways the GOP can’t. As bitcoiners isn’t this what we want?

— Gordon Perkins (@peconicgp) September 23, 2025

Competition

The fight for a governor’s seat in 2026 is already considered a tough contest. Calderon is facing several noteworthy candidates, including Congresswoman Katie Porter from the Democratic Party and Republican Fox News contributor Steve Hilton.

Given that the election will take place on Nov. 5, Calderon may approve himself at some point. Yet, it is hard to say if his participation in the race makes a difference. 





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Ian Calderon Runs for California Governor, Vows to Make State ‘Undisputed Leader’ on Bitcoin

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In brief

  • Former California Assembly majority leader Ian Calderon has vowed to put Bitcoin on California’s balance sheet and back crypto payments for state programs as part of his bid for governor.
  • Calderon previously pushed blockchain policy through AB 2658 and worked with the Satoshi Action Fund.
  • Current bills, AB 1180 and AB 1052, stop short of allowing the state to hold Bitcoin directly.

Ian Calderon, a Democrat and former California Assembly majority leader, announced his candidacy for governor with a promise to put Bitcoin at the heart of state policy.

“California has always been a leader on technology. It’s time for us to get back to our roots and make California the undisputed leader on Bitcoin,” Calderon tweeted Tuesday.

California has always been a leader on technology. It’s time for us to get back to our roots and make California the undisputed leader on Bitcoin.

— Ian Calderon (@IanCalderon) September 23, 2025

Calderon has been a staunch advocate of the digital asset, confirming in a livestream earlier on the same day that, once elected, he would “make sure that we hold Bitcoin on our balance sheet” and support crypto payments for state programs.

In a separate campaign video, Calderon compared his positioning with the status quo.

“My generation pays bills on our phones, we send money to each other with Venmo and we save in Bitcoin,” Calderon said. “But the people running our government, they’re trying to use yesterday’s ideas to solve today’s problems, and it isn’t working.”

“Ambitious and daring”

Calderon’s statements are not without weight or work behind it.

Having left the Assembly in 2020 after three terms, he remained active in the policy space, including work with the Satoshi Action Fund in 2022 that explored legislation to consider Bitcoin as legal tender in the state. Calderon is also cited as a contributor in a 2020 roadmap developed by California’s Blockchain Working Group, a forum that produced policy recommendations on digital assets.

Much earlier in 2018, Calderon authored AB 2658, which created California’s Blockchain Working Group to evaluate the technology’s uses, risks, benefits, and legal implications for state government and businesses, define blockchain in statute, and develop policy recommendations including possible amendments to state law.

Calderon’s stance “shows that crypto has entered the mainstream, because candidates are now openly running on pro-crypto platforms and competing with one another,” Robert Boris Mofrad, co-founder of blockchain data storage firm Serenity, told Decrypt.



Yet whether the position is adopted or received “by the masses” would remain unclear, Mofrad noted. “But what we can understand is that crypto is now a serious part of the political conversation, one that began at the federal level with the idea of creating a reserve.”

“California putting Bitcoin on its balance sheet is quite an ambitious and daring position,” Mofrad said. “When it comes to a state such as California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, the situation is different.”

Because governments “usually treat Bitcoin as an intangible asset,” and must “record every loss in value but cannot really record gains,” such proposals make it “hard for a state treasury to manage responsibly,” he added.

California and crypto

Calderon’s campaign comes as California weighs incremental crypto legislation through two key legal frameworks.

AB 1180 would allow certain state agencies to pilot stablecoin payments for fees beginning in 2026, while AB 1052 brings crypto under the state’s unclaimed property law by requiring inactive custodial accounts to be transferred to the state and held in their original form.

Neither measure, however, would authorize California to purchase or hold Bitcoin directly, marking a clear distinction from Calderon’s proposal.

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California Lawmakers Once Again Challenge Newsom's Tech Ties with AI Bill
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California Lawmakers Once Again Challenge Newsom’s Tech Ties with AI Bill

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Last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a wildly popular (among the public) and wildly controversial (among tech companies) bill that would have established robust safety guidelines for the development and operation of artificial intelligence models. Now he’ll have a second shot—this time with at least part of the tech industry giving him the green light. On Saturday, California lawmakers passed Senate Bill 53, a landmark piece of legislation that would require AI companies to submit to new safety tests.

Senate Bill 53, which now awaits the governor’s signature to become law in the state, would require companies building “frontier” AI models—systems that require massive amounts of data and computing power to operate—to provide more transparency into their processes. That would include disclosing safety incidents involving dangerous or deceptive behavior by autonomous AI systems, providing more clarity into safety and security protocols and risk evaluations, and providing protections for whistleblowers who are concerned about the potential harms that may come from models they are working on.

The bill—which would apply to the work of companies like OpenAI, Google, xAI, Anthropic, and others—has certainly been dulled from previous attempts to set up a broad safety framework for the AI industry. The bill that Newsom vetoed last year, for instance, would have established a mandatory “kill switch” for models to address the potential of them going rogue. That’s nowhere to be found here. An earlier version of SB 53 also applied the safety requirements to smaller companies, but that has changed. In the version that passed the Senate and Assembly, companies bringing in less than $500 million in annual revenue only have to disclose high-level safety details rather than more granular information, per Politico—a change made in part at the behest of the tech industry.

Whether that’s enough to satisfy Newsom (or more specifically, satisfy the tech companies from whom he would like to continue receiving campaign contributions) is yet to be seen. Anthropic recently softened on the legislation, opting to throw its support behind it just days before it officially passed. But trade groups like the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and Chamber for Progress, which count among its members companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta, have come out in opposition to the bill. OpenAI also signaled its opposition to regulations California has been pursuing without specifically naming SB 53.

After the Trump administration tried and failed to implement a 10-year moratorium on states implementing regulations on AI, California has the opportunity to lead on the issue—which makes sense, given most of the companies at the forefront of the space are operating within its borders. But that fact also seems to be part of the reason Newsom is so shy to pull the trigger on regulations despite all his bluster on many other issues. His political ambitions require money to run, and those companies have a whole lot of it to offer.



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Over 50% of games industry layoffs have taken place in California
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Over 50% of games industry layoffs have taken place in California

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The current climate of layoffs is as prevalent as ever in the games industry, and Amir Satvat has provided more insight into the locations most affected – with more than 50% of cuts taking place in California.

Satvat, who is business development director at Tencent Games, also runs a community of resources for people looking to find work after being affected by layoffs or for individuals looking to enter the industry.

Speaking to The Game Business, Satvat said that “over 70%, and in some years 75%, of the layoffs have been in North America”.

He noted that while “overall employment in the industry has actually increased” since before the pandemic, developers working in the US have been facing noticeable cuts in their workforce – particularly in AAA studios.

As a result, Satvat has been recommending that “games people focus on looking for non-game roles” to secure a new job.

“I think of people like concentric circles,” he explained. “Are they one circle away from games? Or two circles? One circle away would be you were at Amazon in the studio, now you’re at Prime Video. Two circles would be even further away from that. We now have more placements for our community in non-games than in games.”

Satvat continued: “We know 85% of [people looking for game jobs] are going to have to find non-game jobs. So, it’s been a slow, empathetic process of trying to get people to understand that they simply have to look at other stuff. It’s just mathematically not possible otherwise. Not forever, but for some amount of time.”

Despite the uncertainty, Satvat is optimistic about the future of the industry – especially in co-development and ex-development.

“The games market is absolutely growing and has a lot of room to grow,” he said. “I really think it’s going to be the dominant interactive and entertainment medium of the next century, unless something significant changes.”

“I feel like it is easier than ever to self-start, to self-publish, to make your own game, to make your own mods, to learn what to do. Everything is growing, everything is more open, and people still love games, but it just takes a very different entrepreneurial skillset to take that on.”

Satvat concluded: “If what you’re looking for is the 20-year, AAA standard functional gig in one location, that’s going to be an expectation set that’s hard to meet increasingly and may disappoint.

“But I feel like if you go into it open, it’s still very, very tough, but there are opportunities that didn’t exist before.”



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California Man Sentenced in $37M Crypto Scam Amid Ongoing DOJ Crackdown

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In brief

  • Shengsheng He was sentenced to 51 months for laundering nearly $37M stolen in a crypto investment scam.
  • The funds were moved through a Bahamas-based shell company, converted to crypto, and sent to scammer wallets.
  • The case is part of a wider DOJ crackdown on global crypto fraud and online money laundering.

Shengsheng He, a California man who helped launder nearly $37 million stolen from U.S. investors through a global cryptocurrency scam, was sentenced Monday to 51 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $26.9 million in restitution, federal prosecutors said.

A resident of La Puente, California, He pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.

According to the Justice Department, He co-owned Axis Digital Limited, a Bahamas-based company used to receive and transfer victim funds.

The scheme relied on unsolicited messages, phone calls, and dating app conversations to build trust with victims.



“The co-conspirators then promoted fraudulent digital asset investments to the victims,” the DOJ wrote. “Scammers would tell victims that their investments were appreciating in value when, in fact, the funds the victims sent to the scammers had been stolen.”

Once victims sent money, the funds were funneled into a single Axis Digital account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, then converted into the Tether (USDT) stablecoin and moved to wallets controlled by the scammers.

Authorities said the funds were routed through shell companies and overseas accounts to obscure their origin.

Prosecutors said the scam operated out of Cambodian “pig butchering” centers, where criminals use social engineering to defraud victims.

Pig butchering scams are typically high-volume digital fraud schemes, and in 2024, netted $9 billion according to Chainalysis. Victims believed they were investing in legitimate digital assets, but their money was being laundered across a network of accounts spanning multiple countries.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.

He’s case is part of a broader crackdown on crypto-related fraud. In recent months, the Justice Department has seized digital assets linked to terrorist financing, returned millions to victims of investment fraud, and targeted offshore exchanges used to launder illicit funds.

In March, prosecutors seized $201,000 in crypto linked to Hamas. In July, the DOJ began returning $7.1 million to victims of a $97 million oil and gas fraud scheme.

Authorities have also taken down domains tied to Russian-run exchanges accused of processing more than $800 million in illicit transactions.

Eight co-conspirators have pleaded guilty in the Axis Digital case, including Jose Somarriba and Jingliang Su, two of He’s business partners. Su, a Chinese national, helped convert and transfer stolen funds.

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Over 50% of video game layoffs have been in California, says Game Changers award recipient
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Over 50% of video game layoffs have been in California, says Game Changers award recipient

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The games industry has been wracked by layoffs in the last few years, but over half of all layoffs have been in California, with North America overall the worst hit country.


That’s according to Amir Satvat, who spoke to The Game Business on the topic. Satvar was the first recipient of the Game Changers award at The Game Awards 2024 for his work assisting laid-off employees across the industry.


“Over 70 percent, and in some years 75 percent, of the layoffs have been in North America,” said Satvat. “North America used to have 30 percent, 35 percent, 40 percent of the open roles, and that number is now down to 25 percent.”


Globally, employment in the games industry has increased since before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, though that depends on region. While Asia has seen an increase in jobs, North America has seen its workforce in AAA studios cut by 15 to 20 percent.


“And here’s another stat,” added Satvat, “over 50 percent of the cuts globally have been in California. California AAA is like the epicentre of the difficulty.


“There is opportunity, but it may be that if you want to stay in the industry, being open to going to some of these places like China, like Japan, not forever, but for some amount of time, that’s going to become a larger part of the equation.”


The most high profile layoffs recently were from Microsoft back in June, which included the cancellation of Perfect Dark from the California-based The Initiative, though developers were affected on both sides of the pond.


So far this year, an estimated 4400 people have been laid off globally in the games industry.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.



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