Political action committees (PACs) representing the interests of the crypto industry have already secured millions of dollars in funding as the US heads toward its midterm elections.
Super PACs are the uber-rich, no-limits, non-disclosure counterparts to crypto PACs. Last year, the industry spent at least $245 million in campaign contributions alone.
The main super PAC funded by the cryptocurrency industry, Fairshake, raised some $133 million in 2025, bringing its total cash on hand up to over $190 million. Venture capital firm a16z contributed an initial $24 million, while Coinbase and Ripple each donated $25 million.
This influx of cash has alarmed activist and election reform groups. Saurav Ghosh, director of the Campaign Legal Center — a legal center concentrated on voting rights, fair districting and campaign finance reform — told Cointelegraph:
“This kind of influence buying ultimately undermines the democratic process by marginalizing everyday Americans, ensuring that their voices and interests take a backseat to the crypto industry’s deregulatory desires.”
Bipartisan support ensures crypto lobby’s success
The US crypto industry’s main goal is to pass a large framework law, the CLARITY Act, which passed in the House of Representatives this summer and moved on to the Senate. The bill still hasn’t managed to satisfy the crypto industry, particularly Coinbase, nor the ethics and oversight concerns of Senate Democrats.
Now, the CLARITY Act is in limbo, and Congress is shifting its attention to the 2026 midterm elections. For nearly 80 years, the president’s party has almost always lost the midterms, the federal elections in the off-year between presidential elections. This is particularly important for the crypto industry, which enjoys more full-throated support among the Republican Party. Take, for example, the roll call for the Senate’s vote on the GENIUS Act: Nearly twice as many Democrats voted against the motion compared to those in support of it.
Some in the crypto space have taken this to mean they need to take a partisan stance. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, founders of the crypto exchange Gemini, have poured millions into the conservative PAC Digital Freedom Fund, which aims to boost pro-crypto and pro-Trump candidates.
Others have stressed the need for bipartisan support, warning that backing one party is bound to backfire once the other eventually takes power.
Representative Sam Liccardo, a crypto-friendly Democrat, told Politico in October 2025, “I don’t think anybody in this town would recommend that an industry put their eggs in one party’s basket.”
One major lobby, Fairshake, has shown it’s more than willing to support Democrats, so long as they are sufficiently pro-crypto. The Super PAC actually spent more money in support of Democrats than it did Republicans from 2023 to 2024, according to Open Secrets.
Whether it be among Republicans or Democrats, the crypto industry’s political strategy has changed significantly both in how much and where it spends its dollars.
How did we get here?
Crypto made headlines in 2024 for donating nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to different political campaigns and super PACs — the largest contribution of any single industry.
But this wasn’t crypto’s first step in the political arena. During the crypto bull run of 2020-2021, crypto companies made massive ad buys. Celebrities like Matt Damon were advertising crypto investment platforms. Now-convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried slapped the name of his now-defunct crypto exchange, FTX, onto the home of the Miami Heat basketball team.
At the same time, crypto increased its lobbying efforts in Washington. Major platforms like Coinbase and fintech developers like Ripple padded their budgets as the industry gained visibility.
Coinbase raised spending from $1.5 million in 2020 to $3.9 million in 2021. Ripple more than tripled the amount it spent on lobbying over the same period, spending $330,000 in 2020 and more than $1.1 million in 2021.
One major donor from the crypto space was Bankman-Fried. He made more than $100 million in political campaign contributions in the 2022 midterms. “He leveraged this influence, in turn, to lobby Congress and regulatory agencies to support legislation and regulation he believed would make it easier for FTX to continue to accept customer deposits and grow,” federal prosecutors said in a later indictment.
By Bankman-Fried’s own admission, he supported campaigns on both sides of the aisle, though he found Republicans “far more reasonable” on crypto.
The crypto market crashed soon after. FTX went bust, the Terra stablecoin system collapsed, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US’ main finance regulator under then-Chair Gary Gensler, opened enforcement actions against many crypto companies operating in the US.
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In 2023, the presidential election cycle began. Trump ran against ex-Vice President Kamala Harris. Crypto, for the first time, was on the presidential platform. Trump visited a Bitcoin (BTC) conference and made promises of ending “regulation by enforcement.
Crypto poured money into the race through PACs and super PACs. For the 2024 selections, these were namely:
Fairshake raised a whopping $260 million from 2023 to 2024, at least $92 million of which came from Coinbase. It made $126 million in independent expenditures and transfers to affiliated committees.
Independent expenditures are expenditures “for a communication that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate and which is not made in coordination with any candidate or their campaign or political party,” per the FEC.
According to Follow the Crypto, the two other single-issue crypto PACs are affiliated with Fairshake, despite one being liberal and the other conservative. Defend American Jobs made $57 million in independent expenditures, and Protect Progress made $34.5 million over the same 2023-2024 period.
This vast amount of money entering PACs reflects a broader shift in how companies seek political influence.
“Super PACs are increasingly becoming in vogue for special interests who want to make their presence known in Washington,” Michael Beckel, research director of Issue One — a bipartisan political reform organization watching big money in politics — told Cointelegraph.
“Industry-aligned super PACs with huge bank accounts have made a huge splash and helped thwart new regulations on their business interests.”
Just a few years ago, “corporate influence operations focused more on lobbying and direct campaign contributions,” Beckel explained. “Now we’re seeing sector-specific super PACs with massive bank accounts.”
And it’s changing how laws are made in Washington.
Crypto lobby affects policy as Trump seeks to “nationalize” elections
Blockchain bigwigs now regularly visit Washington to meet with lawmakers and advise policymakers on how to regulate the industry.
Issue One vice president of advocacy Alix Fraser said, “The Trump administration is packed with tech industry insiders who have acted in the interest of their own companies — not the American people — to rig policy for their own profit.”
The degree to which the crypto industry is involved in the legislative process is no more apparent than with the market structure bill making its way through the Senate. Work on the bill stalled in mid-January after Coinbase withdrew its support.
The exchange’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, wrote on X:
The main point of contention is a provision that would outlaw one of Coinbase’s products: stablecoin yields for consumers. Banks are pushing to outlaw the practice, saying a flight of deposits from insured lenders could threaten financial stability. The crypto industry and Coinbase argue that the ban stifles innovation and is anti-competitive.
Earlier this week, the White House scheduled a closed-door summit for leaders from the crypto and banking industries to hash out their differences, but according to Reuters, no deal was made.
According to reporter Eleanor Terrett, Senate Democrats said that the talks were “constructive” and were optimistic about the chances of passing a bill. Reporter Sander Lutz said that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is “desperate” to get the bill finished, as Fairshake alone now has $193 million in its coffers.
“These payments help explain the crypto industry’s success in curtailing efforts to meaningfully regulate their business model, which is consistent with a well-established practice of wealthy corporate special interests using lobbying and political contributions to influence policy decisions,” Ghosh told Cointelegraph.
“This kind of influence buying ultimately undermines the democratic process by marginalizing everyday Americans, ensuring that their voices and interests take a backseat to the crypto industry’s deregulatory desires.”
Rick Claypool, research director at consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen, told Cointelegraph that big money from lobbies like crypto pushes out the priorities of most voters from the agenda.
“This feeds cynicism — the sense that our elected officials prioritize the interests of wealthy donors over all other constituents — and erodes faith in our democratic institutions.”
Related: US crypto market structure bill in limbo as industry pulls support
The increased influence of monied interests in Washington comes at a time when election integrity itself is under threat. Trump has recently said Republicans should “nationalize” the midterm elections.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places … the Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,’” he said.
He added that he will only accept the results if they are “honest,” while claiming that there was widespread voter fraud in many American cities. Election experts have refuted the claims. House Speaker Mike Johnson has admitted that he himself has no evidence of his own claims of voter fraud.
Marc Elias, a partner at Elias Law Group, said that Trump “is not interested in following the Constitution. As we have seen before, he prefers to act by force.”
Crypto is set to increase its influence in Washington as the very elections themselves are at risk of tampering and interference from the highest levels of government.
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