Fairshake has helped bring about primary defeats, but the political action committee has yet to spend most of its money
By
Victor ReklaitisFollow
Published: Aug. 1, 2024 at 12:40 p.m. ET
The crypto industry has become a major player in this year’s elections.PHOTO: MARKETWATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/ISTOCKPHOTO
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Here’s another sign of the cryptocurrency industry’s growing clout in politics: The super PAC that has raised the most money in the current election cycle is one focused on supporting crypto fans while opposing crypto critics.
A super PAC is an independent political action committee, and the crypto industry’s biggest one is called Fairshake.
Fairshake has hauled in $203 million for the 2024 election cycle, according to an analysis of disclosures as of Wednesday by OpenSecrets, a watchdog group that tracks money in U.S. politics.
That’s more money than any other super PAC. Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC that supports 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, ranks second with $201 million raised, while third place goes to Senate Majority PAC, which supports Democrats in U.S. Senate races and has scored $167 million.
So what will the pro-crypto super PAC do with its money? A spokesman for Fairshake said in March that it plans to target closely watched Senate races in Ohio and Montana that will help determine whether Democrats or Republicans control that narrowly divided chamber of Congress.
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Fairshake is widely viewed as likely to run ads against incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who has often taken skeptical stances on virtual currencies like bitcoin
, leading to an F grade for him from a pro-crypto PAC called the Stand With Crypto Alliance. He’s facing Republican challenger Bernie Moreno, a car dealer turned crypto entrepreneur who scores an A grade from that group.
Fairshake also has been seen as leaning toward opposing incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, who gets a C from Stand With Crypto, which describes that grade as a neutral rating. His Republican challenger, businessman and political neophyte Tim Sheehy, scores an A.
When asked about the two Montana candidates’ stances toward the crypto industry, Sheehy’s campaign pointed MarketWatch to Tester’s December 2022 statement that “it’s all bullshit,” as well as to the senator’s statement that same month that he opposed regulating crypto because that would make people “think it’s real.”
In addition, Sheehy’s campaign pointed to their candidate’s June statement on social media that crypto “represents the future of finance
and the internet, and thousands of jobs for America.”
Tester’s campaign didn’t respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment, and neither did the campaigns of Brown or Moreno in Ohio.
Tester has appeared more supportive of digital assets in recent months than he was at the end of 2022 — which was shortly after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. In May, the senator voted in favor of overturning Securities and Exchange Commission guidance that critics said made it too expensive for financial institutions to provide custody for their clients’ digital assets. In June, he told Semafor that he “thought fax machines were B.S., too,” and described himself as in a process of learning about and conducting due diligence on crypto issues.
His shift comes after Fairshake spent $10 million to help defeat a Democratic candidate in California’s U.S. Senate primary in March. That candidate, California Rep. Katie Porter, said after her loss that she faced “an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election,” then later said she regretted using the word “rig.”
Shortly after that March primary, an official from one of Fairshake’s backers, crypto platform Coinbase
, offered a warning to Tester and Brown in a New York Times interview.
“I wouldn’t say that there’s a target on their backs,” said Coinbase’s head of U.S. policy, Kara Calvert, in that interview, when asked about how the senators are facing lobbying and threatened political spending. “What I would say is, there is, I think, an opportunity, and there is an important time period between now and the election where there are a lot of policy makers that have to make some decision: Do they want to be for clear rules and consumer protections? Or do they not?”
Coinbase, which didn’t respond to a MarketWatch request for comment, has provided the most funding to Fairshake, contributing $45.5 million, though other donors are close behind. Ripple Labs
has given $45 million, and the two crypto-focused founders of venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, have given a total of $44 million, according to Federal Election Commission data. Other top donors to Fairshake are Jump Crypto with $15 million and the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, with $5 million.
These five super PACs have raised the most money in the 2024 election cycle as of July 31, according to OpenSecrets. In this table, “C” stands for conservative, “L” is for liberal, and “X” is for other.PHOTO: OPENSECRETS
This summer, Fairshake helped defeat another Democratic lawmaker in a tough primary election, as it spent $2 million to oppose New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman. The super PAC and its affiliates — called Protect Progress and Defend American Jobs — also have spent in support of a range of GOP and Democratic candidates, such as by splashing out more than $2 million to help crypto-friendly Democratic House candidate Shomari Figures win his primary in Alabama.
In Fairshake video ads against Porter and Bowman, crypto
didn’t get mentioned all, but rather the focus was on criticizing the candidates’ integrity. One video attacked Porter as “a fake,” while another said “decency” is “gone in Jamaal Bowman’s New York.”
The pro-crypto super PAC has yet to spend most of its money, with an FEC filing showing it had $120 million in cash on hand as of June 30, while Protect Progress and Defend American Jobs had $7.3 million. Fairshake isn’t planning to spend on the presidential race, according to multiple published reports.
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A Fairshake spokesman didn’t respond to MarketWatch’s requests for comment. In a news release in December, the super PAC said it’s “dedicated to advancing leaders who are poised to champion innovation and navigate the complexities of responsible regulation in the digital age.”
“In order for the blockchain economy to realize its full potential, a clear regulatory and legal framework for success is needed,” the release also said.
In May, the House passed a bill that aims to create a new disclosure and registration regime for digital-asset companies, including granting primary responsibility for regulating the industry to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than the SEC, which is widely disliked by the crypto community. But the bill faces long odds in the Senate, where lawmakers have crafted their own crypto-regulation measures.
Both Coinbase and Ripple are currently fighting enforcement actions brought against them by the SEC, after the regulator accused the companies of unlawfully selling securities to the public without registering with the agency.
Chris Matthews contributed to this report.