The Crypto Super PAC That Bought the 2024 Election

In briefDecrypt’s Art, Fashion, and Entertainment Hub. It was December 2022, FTX had just collapsed into a $32 billion dollar cloud of vapor

In late 2023, leaders of America's wealthiest crypto companies decided to band together and protect their young industry from extinction. Policy experts at these companies convinced their bosses that a crypto super PAC could be the path forward.

After vetting Fairshake, a newly created crypto super PAC, it was decided that the plan could work if everyone involved agreed on several fundamental questions.

If Ripple, Coinbase, and Andreessen Horowitz gifted Fairshake a massive war chest, would they all have the stomach to go after powerful incumbent lawmakers? Could they all agree on a bipartisan slate of candidates to ensure the durability of their coalition?

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong donated $1 million to Fairshake in September 2023. The next month, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each gave $2.5 million. In November, Coinbase donated $5 million. By Christmas, Andreessen and Horowitz gifted another $14 million; Coinbase, another $15.5 million.

Ripple matched both firms by throwing $20 million into the pot. By the start of 2024, Fairshake had amassed nearly $85 million, obliterating the previous record.

By the eve of 2024’s presidential election, Fairshake and its affiliate PACs would raise nearly $300 million.

Leaders of the crypto policy movement are emphatic that this sea change was primarily thanks to a grassroots campaign, instigated by Coinbase, to activate the so-called crypto voter and show lawmakers how many millions of Americans were willing to support—or oppose—candidates based on their crypto stances.

Fairshake's spending history tells another story. In February, the super PAC deployed over $10 million in a successful bid to defeat Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), a candidate for California's open U.S. Senate seat.

This initial flex of Fairshake’s financial muscle was significant for several reasons. For one, it was seismic in scale: this single spend on anti-Porter ads dwarfed the candidate’s own positive ad spend by a factor of 20:1.

Secondly, Porter wasn’t even particularly anti-crypto; she rarely if ever spoke on the subject. She was, however, something of a protégé of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a staunch crypto critic. The association with Warren, apparently, was enough to trigger the crypto industry’s nuclear spending.

“Porter was not exactly crusading against crypto, and yet they unloaded on her,” Rick Claypool, a research director at Public Citizen, told Decrypt. “That struck fear into the hearts of candidates.”

In the spring, a handful of key crypto-related votes came before Congress: a vote in the House on FIT21, a potential crypto market regulatory framework, and a vote in both chambers on the repeal of SAB 121, an SEC rule that discouraged banks from holding crypto.

While both bills would have had a tangible impact on crypto if signed into law, their consideration in May arguably served a more important purpose: acting as a litmus test for lawmakers regarding their stances on digital assets.

Months prior, Fairshake had signaled its intention to spend heavily in the general election. Those tens of millions of dollars, crucially, had yet to be committed for or against any general election candidates when FIT21 and SAB 121 came before Congress.

During those spring votes, Fairshake’s war chest hung in the air over Capitol Hill “like a corporate money Death Star,” Public Citizen's Claypool said.

The results were dramatic: 71 House Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, broke with President Joe Biden to pass FIT21. Twelve Senate Democrats, including then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, defied Biden to pass a repeal of SAB 121. (The president subsequently vetoed the resolution.)

Democrats facing battleground elections in 2024 demonstrated significant changes in tune. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), for example, was running for a hotly contested U.S. Senate seat in Michigan at the time; she held an “F” rating on Coinbase’s “Stand With Crypto” watchdog site a month prior to the FIT21 and SAB 121 votes.

She then supported both initiatives in late May. In short order, her Stand With Crypto rating was upgraded to an “A.”

In September, Fairshake opted to throw millions of dollars behind Slotkin and against her opponent, a Republican who had vocally supported crypto for years. Slotkin ultimately won Michigan’s Senate race by a margin of less than 0.34%.

Most crypto industry leaders involved in Fairshake’s operations see the conversion of politicians like Slotkin as proof of crypto’s salience among the American public.

“I think once that became crystallized for Democrats, it made