Although President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party swept the 2024 general election, the cryptocurrency industry feels it is the real winner.
Powered by donations from some of the biggest figures in cryptocurrency and venture capital, three political action committees poured more than $100 million into efforts to influence the 2024 election.
“This election was a huge win for crypto,” Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase Global Inc., wrote on Nov. 7 in an article on social media platform X.
Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2012, donated about $55 million to the super PAC Fairshake, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. Armstrong personally donated $1 million.
As Armstrong wrote, the industry had much to celebrate in early November. It saw its preferred candidates take the White House and win key seats in both houses of Congress. He declared that the 119th Congress will be the “most pro-crypto Congress ever.”
In his message, Coinbase’s leader wrote something that is usually implied but rarely said in the world of political spending.
10 Cents to $89,000
Twenty years ago, few people had heard of cryptocurrency—a term used to refer to decentralized digital currencies as opposed to central bank digital currencies, which are controlled and backed by a government or central bank. One week after the Nov. 5 election, a bitcoin was trading for more than $89,000. Gold, by comparison, traded for about $2,600 per ounce on the same day.
Between 2007 and 2009, a person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto conceived of and launched bitcoin. It was a new type of digital money secured via encryption technology. Unlike traditional currency, bitcoin can transfer value online without a bank or a payment processor. It is not backed by any government, central bank fiat currency, or physical asset.
Bitcoin began as an obscure novelty worth less than 10 cents per token. However, its price has exploded in the past decade, creating significant public interest in the digital asset. According to the crypto website Coinranking, as of Nov. 13, bitcoin’s market capitalization was about $1.83 trillion.
Nevertheless, public opinion polling shows that a majority of Americans are not confident in cryptocurrency as an investment. A Pew Research Center study published in October found that just 5 percent of people surveyed in February said they were “very” or “extremely” confident in the reliability and safety of cryptocurrency.
The same report found that 17 percent of Americans have invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency. About 38 percent of respondents said that as an investment, cryptocurrency has done “worse than expected.”
Rick Claypool, research director in the president’s office of Public Citizen, told The Epoch Times that cryptocurrency, generally, is an extremely volatile investment vehicle without any intrinsic value—one that is now very risky for the average investor.
Regulators Take Aim
The growing use of cryptocurrency over the past decade, and concern about the consumer risks, has led to a rush to begin regulating the fast-growing industry.The swift rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried and his cryptocurrency exchange FTX highlighted the potential for fraud in a lightly regulated sector of the economy.
In March, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture for what the U.S. Department of Justice called his “orchestration of multiple fraudulent schemes.” Bankman-Fried was accused of stealing more than $8 billion of his customers’ money through FTX and Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency trading firm he founded.
Bankman-Fried was initially arrested in the Bahamas and extradited to the United States, where he was charged with multiple fraud offenses, in December 2022. FTX collapsed in November 2022.
A year earlier, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler asked the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs for additional resources to begin addressing regulatory concerns surrounding the cryptocurrency industry. In that testimony, he said the entire crypto asset class was “rife with fraud, scams, and abuse.”
Under Gensler, who was appointed commissioner by President Joe Biden in April 2021, the SEC views most crypto assets as securities. Since 2022, the SEC has charged multiple firms with violating federal securities law by offering and selling unregistered securities.
As recently as Oct. 9, when he appeared at a conference at the New York University School of Law, Gensler said he continues to view the crypto industry as a hotbed of “fraudsters,” “grifters,” and “scams.”
Election Targets
In 2024, the industry began spending on political causes through three linked committees: Fairshake, Defend American Jobs, and Protect Progress. Claypool said that while these PACs were founded and funded by crypto, none of the advertisements and political messaging that they paid for said anything about cryptocurrency or a candidate’s positions on financial regulations.
Fairshake was launched in May 2023. According to federal records, within its first six months, it received donations of $1 million or more from Armstrong, Coinbase, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. By the end of 2023, it had raised about $85.7 million.
Representatives of Coinbase, Andreessen, and Horowitz did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
According to its latest FEC disclosure, covering its activities through Oct. 16, the PAC raised about $118.4 million and spent about $153.3 million in 2024. Its top donors were Coinbase, executives at Andreessen Horowitz, and Ripple Labs Inc.
Representatives of Ripple did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
Fairshake’s most significant independent expenditures against a single candidate, totaling more than $10 million, went toward opposing Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) in her bid to replace outgoing Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.). Porter lost in the state’s Democratic Party primary to Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) in March.
Ahead of Porter’s primary, a new political group called the Stand With Crypto Alliance emerged. In its inaugural release, dated Feb. 7, Stand With Crypto said it planned to launch a “candidate questionnaire and voter education program” in California.
Stand With Crypto Alliance Inc. is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization formed in 2022. It shares an electoral philosophy with Fairshake and is supported by Coinbase and other cryptocurrency companies. The Feb. 7 statement said the group was created at about the same time as Fairshake.
Representatives of Fairshake and Stand With Crypto did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
Along with hosting resources for organizing and running social media, Stand With Crypto assigns friendliness grades to more than 1,000 politicians. According to its online database of ratings, it gave Porter an “F” and rated her “strongly against crypto” because of her votes on bills in the House, a message published on her X social media account, and a statement that she made in 2022.
Schiff got an “A.”
Later in the election cycle, Fairshake began to transfer funds to the super PACs Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress. Those PACs focused their independent expenditures on boosting Republicans and Democrats, respectively. Defend American Jobs got about $39.5 million for Fairshake, while Protect Progress got about $24.7 million. Additionally, both PACs received donations from Coinbase, Ripple, Andreessen, and Horowitz.
Claypool said that the crypto industry backed Democrats and Republicans in order to maximize their political leverage and extract as many pro-crypto commitments as possible from both sides of the aisle during the campaign season.
According to FEC records, most of Defend American Jobs’ independent expenditures went toward aiding candidate Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) in his ultimately successful quest to unseat the Senate Banking Committee’s chairman, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).
The PAC supported Moreno with about $40.1 million in independent expenditures. Stand With Crypto gave the three-term Brown an “F,” while Moreno got an “A.”
On Nov. 7, Armstrong cheered the departure of Brown, calling him “one of the most anti-crypto senators out there.”
“Crypto supporting Bernie Moreno was the key factor in his victory,” Armstrong said.
Stand With Crypto said that nationally, 273 of the House candidates it rated as “pro-crypto” won their races, while 122 candidates it called “anti-crypto” were also elected. In the Senate, 19 of its “pro-crypto” candidates won, and 12 of the “anti-crypto” candidates won.
In the presidential race, Stand With Crypto gave Trump an “A.” Conversely, it said there was “not enough information” to assign any grade to his Democratic Party opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Armstrong said he interpreted the national election results as a complete repudiation of Gensler, “who tried for years to unlawfully kill our industry.”
Although Trump said in a 2019 X post that crypto was “not money” and its value was based on “thin air,” he changed his tune in the 2024 campaign. In a July appearance at the Bitcoin Conference 2024 in Nashville, Trump vowed to fire Gensler on his first day in office, end the Biden administration’s “anti-crypto crusade,” and ensure that the United States will be the world’s crypto capital.
Claypool said he is concerned about the number of prospective members of the incoming administration who have investments in, or other ties to, the crypto industry. For instance, Trump has selected Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chair of the Trump 2024 Transition Team, as his nominee for secretary of commerce.
In a July statement, Lutnick called his company a “strong” supporter of bitcoin. He has also said the firm is a “custodian” for a major alternative cryptocurrency known as Tether.
‘A Crypto-Shaped Club’
Leading backers of Fairshake made their political goals and future spending plans clear at the end of 2024. Claypool said the crypto industry is signaling that it will continue to try to shape the U.S. government to its liking with its money.In statements published online, both Stand With Crypto and Andreessen Horowitz said they believe the crypto industry desires what they call regulatory clarity.
In a message published on the venture capital firm’s website, Chris Dixon, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said the industry is asking Washington to “establish” rules rather than roll them back.
Stand With Crypto said on its website that it supports two key bills being considered by the 118th Congress: the so-called FIT21 and the House Joint Resolution on SAB 121.
The first bill would classify cryptocurrency as commodities rather than securities, and assign most regulatory authority for crypto to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than the SEC. The second would repeal the SEC’s Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121, which Stand With Crypto calls “another example of regulatory overreach from the SEC.”
“They want legitimacy,” Claypool said. “They want bespoke, light-touch regulation of their choice.”
Both Dixon and Armstrong said in their early November messages that their firms were putting more money into Fairshake to continue their mission in 2026 and beyond. Armstrong said in early November that Fairshake already had $78 million to spend on the midterm elections.
Claypool said that sum, combined with the transparent political goals of the group’s benefactors, serves as a potent warning to any would-be detractors on Capitol Hill.
“They have money that they can threaten to unload on candidates straying from their preferred policy,” he said. “That sends a message that a crypto-shaped club is still hanging over lawmakers who were ... ostensibly elected to carry out the interests of their constituents.
“When it comes to these issues, [legislators] might be thinking of that crypto money ... before they think of what is actually best for the people who voted them into office.”
