The Crypto Bros Are Taking Over Politics

Good news for people who like massive floods of funny money sluicing around in our politics. After Sam Bankman-Fried got sent off to the hoosegow for 25 years after being convicted of fraud and money laundering when his zany Ponzi scheme collapsed in a heap in November 2023, a massive hole opened up in campaign spending. As you might imagine, though, a new cryptocurrency super PAC has arrived on the scene to more than fill the vacuum. 

Fairshake PAC, a “nonpartisan” super PAC funded by “techno-optimist” Marc Andreessen, the Winklevoss twins, and the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, is hoping to hand the Senate to Republicans in an unprecedented infusion of corporate cash into the 2024 election—which the crypto bros have evidently decided has become a pivotal moment for the the future of their buckraking schemes. 

You can get a good sense of their activity by studying the spending going on in the Buckeye State. In August, Defend American Jobs, an arm of the Fairshake PAC network, announced it would spend at least $12 million to defeat Democratic Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown. A win for Republicans in Ohio would almost certainly give the party control of the Senate. With this announcement, the second-wealthiest super PAC in the nation got knee-deep in the effort to prize Democrats from their seats in the guise of fighting cryptocurrency regulation. 

But the move cost the dark money organization some of its bipartisan gloss. Following the news of Fairshake’s support of Brown’s opponent, Republican Bernie Moreno, top Democratic donor Ron Conway broke away from the uber-powerful super PAC. “There is an ‘elephant in the room,’” Conway wrote to dozens of donors in an email acquired by Politico. “We have two factions: a moderate faction and a Donald Trump faction (Brian and Marc),” referring to Marc Andreessen and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

Conway claimed that the news that the PAC would spend $12 million on the Ohio race came as a surprise to him, which he viewed as a “slap in the face” to himself and Senator Chuck Schumer—who spoke at a “Crypto4Harris” town hall fundraiser that week alongside billionaire Mark Cuban and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. “Because of your selfish hidden agendas it is time for us to separate,” said Conway. “This is a wake up call to myself that I have been working too long with people who [do] not share common values and that is unacceptable.… I will … no longer compromise myself by associating or helping.”

Conway, who originally donated $500,000 to Fairshake, could be a canary in the crypto coal mine. According to an analysis by Public Citizen, nearly half of all corporate money during this election cycle is coming from the crypto industry. Data provided to The New Republic from Open Secrets adds some staggering details: Crypto companies have spent over $121 million to sway elections during this cycle. By comparison, since the Citizens United ruling in 2010, the fossil fuel industry has collectively spent $176 million over 14 years of election cycles. As Silicon Valley continues to turn in the direction of Donald Trump and his authoritarian leanings, Democrats have a choice: Call out the way this dark money is being used to prop up Republican misrule to better grease the wheels for the crypto industry, or try to cash in themselves.

Crypto’s carnival barkers had their hooks deep in the Democratic Party not long ago. In 2022—long before the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, and his lengthy prison sentence, Bankman-Fried was painted as a “potential Democratic savior.” His “pandemic preparedness” super PAC, Protect Our Future, was making big waves in Washington as the alleged wunderkind splashed an initial public offering of $27 million, largely spent in Democratic races. Overnight, Bankman-Fried became one of the party’s biggest individual campaign players.

But following the 2022 midterm elections, it was revealed that Bankman-Fried’s convictions were as fungible as his boodle, as he admitted that he may have been the “second or third biggest” GOP donor in the cycle. He confessed to hiding tens of millions in Republican donations just to avoid the negative press attention. “I didn’t want to have that fight, so I just made all the Republican [donations] dark.” 

Even as he splashed his cash for Democrats, Bankman-Fried showed some reactionary proclivities, spending against left-wing Democrats. According to Federal Election Commission data, over 75 percent of his spending for Democrats went to groups who worked with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, who have in recent election cycles been principally dedicated to defeating leftists in competitive Democratic primaries. (Here, Bankman-Fried found fellow travelers: LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s group Mainstream Democrats PAC was founded with this specific goal, spending in overlapping races. Hoffman is now all in for Kamala Harris.) 

Here in the 2024 cycle, Fairshake PAC initially followed this same playbook, spending $10 million against Representative Katie Porter in her California Senate primary and then $2 million and $1.5 million against Representatives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, respectively, who also ran afoul of AIPAC. Fairshake’s ads against these three candidates notably did not feature language about blockchain technology. As it happens, none of the organizations scuttling under the shadow of these donors’ money—Defend American Jobs, Fairshake, or their third Democrat-oriented output, Protect Progress—wear their crypto obsession on their sleeve. 

The cash has come in stacks, all the same. Fairshake PAC now sits on a war chest of more than $200 million raised. Thus far, it’s spent less than $15 million; its biggest donors have been outspoken Trump supporters Marc Andreessen and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. 

But with the Senate majority up in the air—and the future of cryptocurrency regulation facing similarly uncertain waters—the group is hedging its bets and setting its sights on recovering some of its bipartisan sheen. In August the organization announced plans to spend in Senate races in Arizona and Michigan to support Democratic candidate Representative Ruben Gallego and his colleague Representative Elisa Slotkin with $3 million each. “We’ll have the resources to affect races and the makeup of institutions at every level,” a spokesperson for Fairshake told The New York Times back in March. “And we’ll leverage those assets strategically to maximize their impact in order to build a sustainable, bipartisan crypto and blockchain coalition.”

A nonpartisan group gaining political influence for its business interests sounds benign, but no industry group has ever raised this much cash directly from corporations. Fairshake’s pile of unspent cash can serve as a huge boost to candidates willing to help pave the way for the crypto industry’s designs—or a credible threat to those who won’t. The organization’s soft power has been seen in full exertion in Montana: Back in March, Fairshake planned to spend big in Montana’s races but never clarified which party might be its beneficiary. Since that announcement, Democratic Senator Jon Tester notably changed his tune on cryptocurrency. 

In 2022, Tester was a crypto skeptic, saying he saw “no reason why this stuff should exist.” At the time, his only reticence about regulating crypto derived from tongue-in-cheek fears that doing so would “give [the industry] the ability for people to think it’s real.” But mere months after Fairshake announced that it was planning on reaching into its deep pockets to spend in his Senate race, Tester crossed the aisle to stymie a Securities and Exchange Commission advisory recommending that banks should record digital assets held by customers as liabilities. “Attacking crypto means risking your seat,” wrote former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan on X, citing the $200 million Fairshake had raised at the time. 

Though Fairshake claims it doesn’t plan to target the presidential election, perhaps the person most desperate for its attention is Donald Trump. 

Trump has embedded crypto and bitcoin into his 2024 campaign brand. He’s shilled baseball card–like non-fungible tokens to raise millions, launched a Trump family crypto venture (which was hacked), raised money from industry leaders, and promised to make America the “crypto capital of the planet” if he’s reelected. Upon Trump’s announcement that he’d chosen J.D. Vance as his running mate, some delighted in the fact that Vance would be the “first Bitcoin holder on a presidential ticket.” Cryptocurrency may not be a partisan issue on its face, but Trump seems determined to make it one by melding it with his toxic brand. 

Even as the industry and other Silicon Valley right-wingers coalesce around the Trump-Vance ticket, Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats also appear to be ready to cave to crypto leaders. In August, industry executives met with Harris’s team in a conference call organized by Representative Ro Khanna, who has received nearly $250,000 in political donations from industry; only Gillibrand has received more cash from crypto, according to data provided to TNR from Open Secrets. Harris has been endorsed by Ron Conway and Chris Larsen, the co-founder of Ripple—which is the second-largest donor to Fairshake. 

What the industry actually desires, besides defeating its enemies, is unclear. Stand With Crypto, an advocacy organization started by Coinbase—the cryptocurrency trading platform that is the largest donor to Fairshake—is trying to make it less opaque. The group is hitting the road and traveling to swing states across the country over the next month with celebrity endorsers—such as Big Sean, The Chainsmokers, and (if we’re being extremely charitable with the word “celebrity”) Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema—in tow, to engage crypto voters and convert fence sitters. The group says it “champions for clear, common-sense regulations for the crypto industry,” adding that “keeping crypto in America means securing 4 million jobs over the next 7 years to increase economic mobility.”

Their website grades politicians on their friendliness to the industry. Donald Trump receives an “A,” as does Ro Khanna; Harris’s score is pending. The litmus test being applied involves these candidates’ general public statements about the industry as well as how they’ve voted on key crypto legislation. 

Among the relevant bills are Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 House Joint Resolution, the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21, and the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act, according to Stand With Crypto. The first, described as “very pro crypto,” is a rule submitted by the SEC that was vetoed by President Joe Biden who believed the bill would “constrain the SEC’s ability to set forth appropriate guardrails and address future issues” regarding crypto assets. 

FIT21, which would establish a regulatory framework for digital assets, and the Anti-Surveillance State Act, which would ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency, both passed the House.

“It’s OK if they have a different opinion than you on some other issues, because they will fight for crypto [and] sensible, reasonable regulation that allows the industry to innovate and grow,” said Sinema at a Stand With Crypto event in Arizona. 

Needless to say, the crypto industry hasn’t left everyone agog with wonder. “It’s a lawless industry with a business model that is basically ‘catch us if you can’ [with lawsuits], and before you can do that we’ll buy enough politicians to get a special law passed that has the appearance of regulation with the reality of deregulation,” Dennis Kelleher, CEO of the financial reform nonprofit Better Markets told The American Prospect back in April; he has also written for the Financial Times discouraging Harris from caving to the industry. 

The battle lines, at least for the foreseeable future, are rather starkly drawn, and it’s clear that amassing political power is an existential mission for the crypto industry, rather than simply a side project. “[We] decided that we really need to influence the electoral elements of politics,” said Justin Slaughter, policy director at Paradigm, speaking at Reboot 2024, a San Francisco technology conference focused on politics. “Because we don’t have a policy problem, we have a politics problem.”

“Silicon Valley has woken up to politics, recognizes the stakes, and is playing to win,” according to the conference’s website, which featured speakers such as Gary Tan and the Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts—who promised a “Project 2028” if Harris wins. 

“Ideological strands unite the crypto industry and founders with the [Republican] Party itself. Which is, we support pro-freedom, pro-liberty, we support a max amount of choice to use your dollars, to have independence and freedom,” Jessica Anderson said, speaking at the “New Politics of Crypto” panel alongside Slaughter. “So I think the genesis of the industry aligns very nicely with Republicans, and in a lot of ways, that’s providing common cause this year.”

Anderson is the president of Sentinel Action Fund, a PAC that has spent heavily against Tester, throwing over $1 million to support his Montana Senate opponent, Tim Sheehy. They’ve also spent on Senate races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. During the panel discussion, she declared that the “U.S. Senate is the No. 1 priority” for the group and industry’s political hope at large.  

Despite what you may hear on these panels or from the crypto lobby, cryptocurrency is not a policy issue that many Americans rank highly. But among those who have considered the crypto industry, according to a Pew Research survey last year, 75 percent are not confident about the safety and reliability of cryptocurrency. Further, a majority of voters in six swing states, including 77 percent in Ohio, had a net negative view of crypto, according to industry polling from May—hardly a surprise given this week’s news that their fellow Americans were duped out of more than $5.6 billion last year through fraud schemes involving cryptocurrency, according to the FBI.

Clearly, Americans haven’t forgotten that crypto is a scam. Politicians may be suffering from a shorter memory.