Lmst

The Crypto industry is already engaged in building up and spending SuperPAC money to influence the upcoming 2026 elections with ~ $3 million already spent primarily on special elections in Florida and Virginia.

Crypto PACs claim they already have $221M cash on hand with an additional
$100M "committed" but not yet reported publicly.

Fun Fact: Fairshake, (the largest Crypto PAC by far) is now the #5 most-funded PAC in the country.

Here is a great tracking web site updated regularly and shows where the $$ are coming from and where they are going to. https://www.followthecrypto.org/ #Crypto #Politics #SuperPACS #PACs #FairShake #FollowTheCrypto #CitiationNeeded #MollyWhite #FEC #Elections #2026MidTerms

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Cryptocurrency-industry-pours-avalanche-of-money-into-US-election-campaign-9803748.html

#crypto #FollowTheCrypto

Follow the Crypto cited in The Guardian!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/17/co-founders-of-silicon-valley-venture-capital-firm-back-trump-presidential-bid

#crypto #FollowTheCrypto #USpol

It's worth noting that in races where PACs have opposed candidates but have not supported any candidates (CA Senate primary, NY-16 Dem primary), they are clearly more focused on ousting candidates they view as anti-crypto rather than on supporting any specific candidate.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #FollowTheCrypto #USpol

Cryptocurrency-focused PACs have contributed to both support and oppose candidates from Republican and Democratic parties.

Bar chart: $15.9M to support Republicans
$9.67M to support Democrats
$283K to oppose Republicans
$12.4M to oppose Democrats

However, spending to oppose Democrats does not always support Republicans, and vice versa. For example, when a PAC opposes a candidate in a primary against a candidate from the same party, they may be supporting a different candidate from the same party — or they may intend to support a candidate from the opposing party in a later election.

Based on committee support spending, individual contributions to other candidates, and statements supporting other candidates, opposition spending can be categorized based on likely beneficiary:

A bar chart showing $22 million in spending in favor of Democrats and $16.1 million in favor of Republicans

Oppose spending Targeted candidate Election Likely intended beneficiary Beneficiary party
$10,044,813 Katie Porter California Senate Adam Schiff Democrat
$2,078,023 Jamaal Bowman New York House District 16 George Latimer Democrat
$283,337 Trent Staggs Utah Senate John Curtis Republican
$239,713 Anthony Daniels Alabama House District 2 Shomari Figures Democrat

At this stage of the election cycle, cryptocurrency-focused PACs have contributed more overall to Democrats than to Republicans.

Most of this actually comes from opposition spending to Democrats. While many have assumed that crypto PACs’ opposition to Democrats was in support of Republicans, that’s not actually the case thus far, as I’ve laid out in a new page: https://www.followthecrypto.org/spending.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #FollowTheCrypto #USpol

A bar chart showing $22 million in spending in favor of Democrats and $16.1 million in favor of Republicans

#crypto #FollowTheCrypto

Crossposting a comment I made on HackerNews about Follow the Crypto, since I'm seeing a lot of this kind of whataboutism:

"The real story here is how much power individuals have over our political landscape. George Soros, for example, has injected more than $125M into the midterm race in 2022[1]. To be clear, this is not a partisan issue; the Kochs raised over $70M last year[2]."

I fully agree with you that the broader problem is Citizens United and the ability for corporations and the super wealthy to pour this much money into politics. In fact, I mention this here: FAQ.

I think projects like mine would be extremely valuable for all industries, and I'm enormously grateful to groups like OpenSecrets that do excellent work making a far broader swath of the data more legible. But I am one person without the research team, time, or funding that would be necessary to analyze the data this deeply across industries, and so I focus on crypto (the subject of much of my research and writing).

The code is all open source, and I would be delighted if other projects like this one sprung up. It seems it would be a bit more productive to actually shine a light all the kinds of spending that happen throughout industries and across individuals, rather than using that other spending as a sort of whataboutist argument to dismiss projects like this one that (necessarily) focus on a subset of spending.

"If you want to be critical of super PACs, crypto spending is literally a drop in the bucket and completely missing the forest for the trees. There is a story here, but crypto ain't it."

As this project highlights, crypto is far from a "drop in the bucket" when it comes to super PAC fundraising this cycle. The industry has dramatically ramped up its spending compared to previous election years, which is a large part of why I felt it was important to keep an eye on the spending.

Crossposting a comment I made on HN about Follow the Crypto, since I'm seeing a lot of this kind of whataboutism:

"I fully agree with you that the broader problem is Citizens United and the ability for corporations and the super wealthy to pour this much money into politics. In fact, I mention this here: FAQ.

I think projects like mine would be extremely valuable for all industries, and I'm enormously grateful to groups like OpenSecrets..."

https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/202407141023

#crypto #FollowTheCrypto

#FollowTheCrypto

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