Activity tagged "crypto lobby"

Posted:

Coinbase has tried to portray its “Stand With Crypto” PAC as having broad grassroots support among over a million “crypto advocates”, and boasts on its homepage of nearly $180 million raised by these advocates.

Its first quarterly FEC filing reveals it has had only $13,690 in contributions from seven people over the most recent three-month period. Two of them work for Stand With Crypto and two of them work for Coinbase.

Image
Image

After my reporting about the falsified donations amount on the Stand With Crypto homepage, the PAC added a tooltip that acknowledges that $177.8 million of the “donations by crypto advocates” are actually the multi million dollar donations by a handful of big crypto companies and their executives.

However, they still claim that $1.48 million was raised by Stand With Crypto itself. Either they've raised 99% of their funds in the last 19 days, or they’re doing more funny business with the numbers they’re claiming.

Posted:

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

A bar chart showing $22 million in spending in favor of Democrats and $16.1 million in favor of 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. However, it's worth noting that in races where PACs have opposed candidates but have not supported any candidates (CA Senate primary, NY-16 Democratic primary), they are clearly more focused on ousting candidates they view as anti-crypto rather than on supporting any specific candidate.

I’ve laid this all out in a new page: https://www.followthecrypto.org/spending.

Posted:

Follow the Crypto

It’s finally time to release my newest project: FollowTheCrypto.org.

This website provides a real-time lens into the cryptocurrency industry’s efforts to influence 2024 elections in the United States.

A screenshot of the front page of FollowTheCrypto.org, showing total amounts raised by crypto-currency focused PACs ($203 million) and amounts spent ($38 million). There are also graphs showing expenditures by political party, and expenditures by PAC. There is a list of the top elections influenced by crypto industry money, of the most highly-funded super PACs overall, and of recent expenditures by crypto-focused committees.

I have been working on this for the past two months, after growing increasingly concerned about the influence this industry is trying to exert. Did you know crypto companies have spent more this cycle than the oil or pharmaceutical industries, despite being a small fraction of the size?

A bar chart showing the amount of election spending by sector. Data: Crypto $203,000,000,All health $193,706,986,Communications $178,671,462,Lawyers & lobbyists $172,810,610,All energy $152,567,769,Labor $120,230,704,Transportation $98,461,871,Construction $85,162,003,Agribusiness $84,400,550,Defense $25,445,961

There is more to come, including a bot that will post real-time updates about contributions or expenditures, which you can follow in advance at @followthecrypto . You can also learn more in my announcement post over at Citation Needed.

Please share widely! And, if you don’t already, consider supporting my work. This kind of independent research is what I do full-time, entirely thanks to support from people like you. https://www.mollywhite.net/support/

Posted:

The two candidates in today’s primaries that received substantial backing from cryptocurrency PACs both won their primaries.

1. John Curtis defeated Trent Staggs in the Republican Utah Senate primary, with the help of $1.7 million in crypto industry funding.

2. George Latimer defeated Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary for NY H-16, with the help of $2 million in crypto industry funding.

Ads run by these PACs made no mention of crypto or technology. In the NY race, ads from Fairshake seemed to align very closely with AIPAC’s aggressive campaign against Bowman, echoing their messaging accusing him of antisemitism.

“Defend American Jobs” was the PAC splashing out in the Utah race. They’re the Republican-focused crypto super PAC; “Protect Progress” is the Democrat counterpart.

Though Fairshake (nominally nonpartisan, and by far the highest fundraiser of the crypto PACs) previously made identical donations to both, they’ve just made another $5 million donation to Defend American Jobs without a corresponding donation to Protect Progress.

Defend American Jobs has raised $14.7 million so far this cycle; Protect Progress has raised $10.3 million.

Here's a glimpse at the spending in each race.

Charts showing amounts raised by each candidate, and amounts spent by outside groups to support or oppose. John Curtis raised around $3.8M, $9.2M was spent to support him, and $3.5M of that support came from the crypto industry. Brad R. Wilson raised $5M. Trent Staggs raised $1.25M, $900k was spent to support him, and $1.9M was spent to oppose him, $1.5M of which came from the crypto industry. Jason Walton raised $2.9M.
Charts showing amounts raised by each candidate, and amounts spent by outside groups to support or oppose. Jamaal Bowman raised around $4.3M, $1.9M was spent to support him, and $12M was spent to oppose him, $2.1M of which came from the crypto industry. George Latimer raised $5.8M. $5.6M was spent to support him, and $1.1M was spent to oppose.

Other outside spending for Curtis mostly came from a super PAC called Conservative Values for Utah, with Defend American Jobs pitching in $5M last minute.

And as I mentioned, Bowman’s other opposition primarily came from AIPAC's UDP.