Crypto Already Has a Huge Campaign War Chest. Keeping Bitcoin a Trump Priority Is the Goal. — Barrons.com
By Joe LightThis session of Congress isn't yet a month old, but the crypto industry wants to make clear it is already planning to spend mightily in the 2026 midterm elections. That could help it in an uphill fight to keep digital assets on the priority list this Congress.On Thursday, Fairshake — a large, crypto-backed political action committee — said it already has $116 million in cash on hand to spend in the midterms. That figure would likely already be enough to make it one of the biggest spenders in 2026, and it has plenty of time to grow from here."We are keeping our foot on the gas. The crypto industry is in the best political and policy position it has ever been," said Fairshake spokesman Josh Vlasto in a statement.Fairshake's backers include crypto firms such as Coinbase Global, Ripple Labs, and Uniswap Labs, as well as venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Fairshake also spent more than $100 million in the 2024 election.The crypto industry long derided President Joe Biden's administration for leading a crackdown on crypto companies, alleging that they violated securities laws and enabled money laundering and sanctions evasion. But President Donald Trump has already made clear that the crackdown is over. Agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission have said they are working on rules to make it easier for crypto firms to operate legally.But the industry's larger goal — legislation to establish clear rules of the road for digital-asset companies — will be harder to pull off. The problem is that crypto is just not high enough on the list of priorities for this Congress.Already, lawmakers are bogged down in figuring out what process they will use to pass bills to fund Trump's border-security plans and to extend 2017 tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. Just those two efforts are likely to take the better part of 2025.Before the transfer of power in Washington, lawmakers were relatively close to bipartisan agreements on bills that would regulate exchanges as well as stablecoins, a kind of crypto that is pegged to the dollar. But the Trump administration has now established its own working group to come up with rules and legislative suggestions that will report back in six months, leaving that prior work in limbo.Crypto firms themselves in some cases are sharply divided on what the bills should contain, which will make it easier for lawmakers to drop the issue. Tellingly, the campaign ads that crypto companies bought in 2024 very rarely mentioned crypto. It isn't clear whether voters care much about digital assets compared with kitchen-table issues such as taxes.What all that adds up to is that the crypto industry has little choice but to flaunt its war chest as an incentive — and a threat — to any congressman or senator who would be its enemy or try to put digital assets on the back burner.Fairshake has "an incredible track record of electing candidates that want to write rules to make the US a hub of crypto and tech innovation...and ending the careers of candidates that don't," posted Robert Leshner, who contributed to the PAC and runs a firm making crypto-tied investment products.Write to Joe Light at [email protected] content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.