At the end of June, crypto super PAC Fairshake had almost $127 million cash on hand, second among outside campaign groups only to the primary Republican PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund. The crypto industry has already spent $189 million on House and Senate races this year on top of $133 million spent during the 2024 cycle, according to campaign finance disclosures. While they struggle to maintain consumer interest in their product, crypto has gone all-in on political spending as a top business strategy. “There’s no secret that what they’re up to is trying to use their hundreds of millions of dollars to buy influence and buy the result they want,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in an interview.
A year ago, that strategy paid off with the passage of the GENIUS Act, which created a light-touch regulatory structure for stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to U.S. dollars and similar assets, drawing digital assets further into the traditional financial world. It was the dawn of a new, brighter era for digital assets. With a like-minded Republican Congress and a president who, on top of the hundreds of millions in donations from the industry, had his own direct financial interest in crypto’s success, the industry expected the GENIUS Act to be just the beginning. The next step: get the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a deregulatory market structure framework, onto the president’s desk.
It’s now been over a year since the GENIUS Act was signed, but the crypto industry’s dreams haven’t quite panned out. The CLARITY Act made it out of the House, but is still stalled in the Senate, with only a week left before its chances of survival drop precipitously. This month has seen an extravaganza of powerful monied interests on Capitol Hill—on opposite sides of the issue. The crypto lobby hopes to muscle through legislation they see as their way into the mainstream financial system; Wall Street has been using its own powerful lobbying arm to slow down the CLARITY Act’s progress, over concern of deposit flight to stablecoin issuers. Law enforcement groups are also concerned about a lack of anti-fraud and anti-money laundering protections. But ironically, it is the industry’s most important ally in the federal government and the face of crypto corruption himself, Donald Trump, who has presented the biggest roadblock.
Crypto has gone all-in on political spending as a top business strategy.
The problem lies with the very reason Trump, who once called Bitcoin a “scam,” is suddenly on board with the crypto industry: his personal profits. Spurred by Trump’s recent financial disclosure revealing he raked in over $1.4 billion from his various crypto ventures—including crypto firm World Liberty Financial and a personal memecoin—Senate Democrats, even those who are pro-crypto (or at least pro-crypto campaign cash), have repeatedly refused to vote for…
Read More: Crypto Boosters See a Lack of CLARITY
