Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal discusses the ’emergence of the crypto voter’ on ‘The Claman Countdown.’
The US cryptocurrency industry has turned to some of the biggest spenders traditionally in the 2024 election cycle in an effort to make Washington more favorable to the digital asset.
According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings by blockchain analytics platform Breadcrumbs and FOX Business, the digital goods industry has raised at least $238 million so far this election cycle from corporate donations to super PACs and individual donations to candidates from top industry leaders. That’s more than the oil and gas industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the hedge fund of Wall Street’s top contributors and the Citadel of market-making power, data compiled by OpenSecrets shows.
Investors from the industry’s biggest companies — exchange Coinbase, blockchain payments company Ripple and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz — have donated a combined $160 million to a handful of pro-crypto super PACs supporting industry candidates.
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Brian Armstrong, founder and CEO of Coinbase Inc., speaks during the Singapore Fintech Festival, Singapore, Nov. 4, 2022. (Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“The crypto industry is sending a clear message to US politicians and elected officials with these donations: Current cryptocurrency laws and policies do not work in the US,” said James Delmore, research analyst at Breadcrumbs.
Indeed, of the $238 million raised by the digital asset business and executives, nearly $181 million came from crypto companies’ contributions to super PACs. Another $57 million came from industry players such as Ripple founder Chris Larsen, Andreesen Horowitz founding partner Marc Andreessen and Gemini crypto exchange founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss among various nominees. An analysis by Breadcrumbs and FOX Business also listed Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick as a contributor to the crypto industry due to his large investments in bitcoin and his advocacy for the sector.
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Most individual donations from industry leaders have gone to pro-crypto congressional candidates, but more than 50% have benefited presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, both of whom have made cryptocurrency campaign issues in the hope of capturing more votes from a growing constituency. .
A review of FEC data shows that Trump and Harris collected $34 million in donations from crypto industry leaders, with Trump making more than $22 million from at least 17 major donors, compared to Harris’s $12 million, 99 % of it from one person – Chris Larsen, Ripple co-founder and Democrat. Larsen has given a total of $11.7 million to the vice-president since August, most of which is Ripple’s XRP crypto token.
A review of FEC data shows that Trump and Harris have collected a combined $34 million in donations from crypto industry leaders. (Getty Images/FOX Business / Fox News)
Silicon Valley mogul Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn who is now at venture capital firm Greylock Partners, donated $250,000 to a leading pro-Harris PAC called Future Forward in October. Hoffman made his fortune in technology, but he is also an early investor in Coinbase and owns bitcoin and has invested in other crypto startups. Ron Conway, another tech investor and crypto advocate, has donated at least $600,000 to Future Forward.
Trump, on the other hand, has a very long list of individual industry donors bringing his total to $22 million ($8.3 million of which has been donated in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ether and XRP), which is a reflection of the industry’s enthusiasm for the Biden administration and its collapse. according to the law. under Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, who Trump vowed to fire “day one” if elected president.
Trump’s biggest industry donor is Cantor’s Lutnick, a veteran Wall Street CEO, but a recent convert to crypto. He is a bitcoin investor and is the exhibitor of a large part of the stablecoin company Tether worth $ 100 billion of US Treasury Holdings. He gave a speech at the annual Bitcoin Conference in July where he announced plans for Cantor to launch a bitcoin financing business, which will help provide investors with ownership of the world’s largest digital currency. Lutnick also chairs Trump’s presidential transition team and has donated at least $6 million to the former president.
Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 16, 2024. (Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
Trump’s biggest crypto donors after Lutnick are Andreessen, who donated at least $5 million; the Winklevoss twins, who donated $2.6 billion; and Jesse Powell, founder of US crypto exchange Kraken, who donated just over 1 million in June.
Other big donors include Bijan Tehrani, CEO of crypto-backed online casino Stake, who donated $852,396 in ether; JP Richardson, CEO of crypto wallet provider Exodus, who donated $853,914 in bitcoin; and Gary Cardone, an entrepreneur and bitcoin investor, who donated $844,474 in bitcoin.
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Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey, who confirmed Trump as a keynote speaker at the Bitcoin Summit, gave the former president less than $500,000 in bitcoin, while Ripple’s general counsel, Stuart Alderoty, gave $300,000 in XRP.
The industry has been spending most of its money on pro-crypto super PACs like Fairshake and its affiliates, which have been spending big on ad campaigns for key congressional races in hopes of packing both the House and Senate with industry candidates. who can help other policies. A spokesperson for Fairshake told FOX Business that it, along with affiliate PACs Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress, raised $170 million in industry capital, and spent $135 million this election cycle.
Cryptocurrencies are seen in this photo taken in Krakow, Poland on November 14, 2022. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images/Getty Images)
The overspending has been widely criticized by observers who see the large donations as an industry-wide effort to buy preferred policy outcomes.
“The multibillion-dollar crypto corporations and the executives who operate them are a mindless attempt by a micro-industry to subvert US democracy in order to further their own profit-maximizing ambitions,” said Rick Claypool, director of research at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “By spending a lot of money, the crypto industry has made its demands for easy touch control and minimal enforcement impossible to ignore.”
Still, the efforts of super PACs have already had some success in shutting out politicians they see as anti-crypto. In March, Fairshake spent more than $13 million on attack ads against anti-crypto Democratic candidates — California Rep. Katie Porter, New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Missouri Rep. Cory Bush. All three lost their first races.
A candidate for the Senate, Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., speaks to members of the media during a campaign event on Feb. 24, 2024, Emeryville, California. | Getty Images
As previously reported by FOX Business, the Fairshake affiliate Defend American Jobs, which primarily donates to Republicans, spent $40 million on advertising campaigns supporting Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, an entrepreneur and crypto advocate, in his fiercely contested race against Sen. Sherrod Brown.
An analysis by Breadcrumbs and FOX Business shows that the total spending of crypto super PACs has now exceeded $137 million.
Delmore of Breadcrumbs contributed data to this report
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