Crypto Spent $300 Million to Become a Partisan Issue

Crypto PACs spent about $130M in 2024 and $176M in 2026 to buy friendly rules. The president's family built a crypto business, the CLARITY Act died 49-50 over ethics.

Summary: On Tuesday night Sherrod Brown won back a Senate seat in Ohio.

The crypto industry had spent about $40 million to take that seat from him in 2024, and Fairshake, the industry's biggest super PAC, committed another $30 million this year to keep him out.

Brown may now take a top spot on the committee that oversees crypto trading.

Democrats won both chambers of Congress, and the people about to run the banking and financial services committees have already said that their first order of business is investigating the president's family crypto business.

Thesis: Two years ago the industry decided that the shortest road to clear rules ran through one political camp.

The camp delivered a stablecoin law and a friendlier SEC, and the president's family went into the crypto business. That business is what killed the broader rules in September.

Now crypto heads into a Democratic Congress identified with one family's private ventures, which is the worst position an industry selling neutral money could have chosen.

Tuesday night in Ohio

The Block called the race at 11:35 p.m. Eastern. Brown, the former Senate Banking chairman crypto lobbyists had spent years treating as their chief obstacle, beat Jon Husted, a senator Stand With Crypto had rated A.

Brown carried an F from the same group.

In 2024 Fairshake and its affiliates spent about $41 million opposing Brown, and he lost to Bernie Moreno, 50.2 percent to 46.4. This year Fairshake confirmed to The Hill a $30 million commitment against him. By late September its affiliate Defend American Jobs had already reported $11.4 million in ads.

It didn't work.

Brown is back, and according to Capstone he could land atop the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the CFTC and, under most versions of a market-structure bill, the bulk of crypto trading. Sources told The Block he's unlikely to sponsor crypto legislation.

The industry spent two cycles trying to remove one senator. He's coming back with a gavel in reach.

The 2024 bet was access

The bet made sense at the time, at least on its own terms. Under the Biden administration the SEC treated most tokens as securities, sued Coinbase and Binance, and wrote rules by enforcement.

The industry wanted the rules written down, and it concluded that the fastest way to get them was to pick the people who'd write them.

So it spent.

Crypto PACs put roughly $130 million into the 2024 cycle, one of the largest corporate political spends that year.

In July 2024 Donald Trump went to the Bitcoin conference in Nashville and promised to fire Gary Gensler on day one and make America "the crypto capital of the planet."

The industry's executives became regulars at Mar-a-Lago. Fairshake itself stayed nominally bipartisan, backing friendly Democrats as well as Republicans, but the industry's public face fused with one campaign.

The access paid out quickly.

Gensler left. Then the SEC dropped its case against Coinbase. Agency heads arrived who'd spent their careers arguing crypto deserved its own rulebook. In July 2025 Trump signed the GENIUS Act, the first federal law for stablecoins (digital dollars a company issues and promises to redeem one for one).

Then the president went into the business

The trouble started before the inauguration. World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture tied to the Trump family, launched in September 2024.

On January 17, 2025, three days before he took office, Trump launched a memecoin bearing his own name.

In May 2025 Trump hosted a dinner at his Virginia golf club for its 220 largest holders.

That same month, an Abu Dhabi state-backed fund, MGX, announced a $2 billion investment in Binance, settled in USD1, the stablecoin World Liberty issues.

In October 2025 Trump pardoned Binance's founder, Changpeng Zhao.

By January of this year, Bloomberg counted about $1.4 billion in crypto-related wealth the family had added in Trump's first year back in office, more than $1 billion of it in realized proceeds, mostly from World Liberty and the memecoin.

That figure excludes another $3.8 billion in locked World Liberty founder tokens.

The industry had asked for a referee. Instead, it got a competitor who also sets the rules. And, the whole movement lost it's way.

What started as an alternative or a protest movement to government overreach and corporate greed is now its poster child.

USD1 is exactly the kind of instrument GENIUS was written to license: a company-issued dollar with reserves, an issuer and a freeze function. (World Liberty used that freeze function last week, locking 27.8 million USD1 during the Binance heist.)

The model the industry lobbied for, regulated digital dollars from approved issuers, now has a flagship owned by the family of the president whose appointees approve the issuers.

The family business is what killed the rules

GENIUS itself nearly died of the many layers of conflicts of interest.

In May 2025, Senate Democrats who'd negotiated the bill walked away from a procedural vote, citing the president's crypto dealings, and it failed 48 to 49 before a compromise got it through in June. That was the warning shot.

The CLARITY Act, the larger bill that would have set rules for crypto exchanges and decided which tokens the SEC or CFTC oversees, didn't recover. On September 15 a motion to advance it failed 49 to 50, eleven votes short of the 60 it needed.

Anthony Scaramucci, a onetime Trump communications director who now runs a crypto-heavy investment firm, put it bluntly at SALT London this week. Asked whether the memecoins and the family's business interests were the reason the bill lost Democratic support, he told Cointelegraph: "Singular reason."

Lawmakers, he said, were "trying to put real teeth into the ethics provision," and the White House wouldn't accept it. He allowed that "there's culpability on both sides."

Just in case the conflict of interest isn't clear yet: The industry's access produced a president with a personal stake in crypto, and the personal stake is the reason the industry didn't get the comprehensive rules the access was supposed to buy.

The industry doubled the bet anyway

You might expect a pause after September 15.

Instead the money got bigger.

A Reuters review found crypto-linked groups spent about $176 million across more than 100 congressional races through October 20, about $151 million of it from Fairshake and its affiliates.

Molly White, who tracks this spending at Citation Needed, put the industry's motive plainly back in February: "they're spending whatever it takes to secure their grip on the reins: because the alternative is existential." In the same piece she added, "I think they know they've overplayed their hand."

The biggest bets went to the same places, against the same people. Fairshake spent more than $10 million against Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in her Senate primary.

She won.

It committed $30 million to Ohio.

Brown won.

On Tuesday Democrats flipped at least seven Senate seats, including Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and Texas, and took a majority of at least 54. They won the House too.

Two cycles, roughly $300 million, and the industry ends up facing the most hostile Congress it has seen.

Crypto now has a party, and it's the one that lost

Bloomberg's headline on Saturday was "Crypto's Trump-Fueled Washington Boom Reaches Its Endgame."

Elizabeth Warren is expected to chair Senate Banking.

Maxine Waters is positioned to run House Financial Services.

Robert Garcia's House Oversight Democrats published a report in January tallying the family's crypto income.

Senate Democrats have asked for hearings on World Liberty's foreign investors, and Adam Schiff and three colleagues have sent Binance questions about its USD1-linked deal with the Abu Dhabi fund.

Bloomberg Government reported this week that these investigations are expected to absorb much of the industry's lobbying work in the next Congress.

The people closest to the industry are saying the same thing. "Many significant figures in crypto aligned themselves with the Trump family," Austin Campbell, a former banker who teaches at NYU Stern, told Bloomberg. "Those chickens are likely to come home to roost." Adam Minehardt of the Hyperliquid Policy Center expects "a real oversight agenda with empowered chairs."

Back in August, Rep. Brad Sherman, asked about investigating the administration's crypto activity, said he "can't imagine that there's anything that we would enjoy talking about more than that."

This is the real cost, and it outlasts any single bill. For the next two years, a large share of American lawmakers will hear "crypto" and think of a memecoin dinner, a pardon and a foreign fund settling a $2 billion deal in the president's family stablecoin.

Open Money has spent years arguing that open settlement is neutral infrastructure, a public ledger anyone can use, benefit from, and verify regardless of who they vote for. The industry's political strategy spent two years teaching Washington the opposite: that crypto belongs to a faction.

There's an older lesson the industry skipped. In the late 1950s, banks in London started taking dollar deposits and lending them outside the reach of American bank rules.

The eurodollar market grew for two decades because it didn't need Washington to stay friendly.

Regulators eventually learned to live with it rather than shut it down. Its durability came from the fact that no single government owned it.

Public blockchains have that property in a purer form. On Tuesday night, as the networks called races, Ethereum and Bitcoin kept producing blocks on schedule. Nobody's ledger needed a Senate majority to settle.

The products the industry actually lobbied for are different.

A GENIUS-licensed stablecoin needs an approved issuer, reserves a regulator signs off on, and a blacklist the issuer controls.

The OCC's implementing rule takes effect January 18. Those coins live or die on agency discretion, and the agencies are about to spend two years answering subpoenas from the committees that oversee their budgets. The industry traded the part of crypto that needed no permission for distribution that needed a patron. Now the patron is a liability.

The honest case against this read

The strongest objection is that the strategy worked. GENIUS is law, and repealing it would take new legislation a president can veto.

The SEC and CFTC keep writing rules under Trump appointees through at least January 2029.

Without the 2024 spending, the industry might still be fighting enforcement actions instead of complaining about oversight letters.

The second is that a Democratic Congress could produce better rules.

Bloomberg's own reporting notes that Democrats want tougher ethics language, stronger consumer protection and a bigger SEC role, and that those demands could open a bipartisan path.

The Crypto Council for Innovation's Ji Kim says "digital assets have always been bipartisan."

A CLARITY bill with a real ethics provision might pass more easily once the person it targets no longer controls both chambers. Eighteen Senate Democrats voted for GENIUS.

The third is that I'm overweighting Washington. Bitcoin has gone through booms and busts under both parties, and most builders don't care who chairs Senate Banking.

What keeps me on this side of the argument is the September vote.

The industry had the White House, both chambers and a friendly SEC, and it still couldn't pass its central bill, because its political patron wouldn't accept limits on his own holdings.

That's an alignment strategy failing under the best conditions it will ever get.

Maybe a Democratic Congress writes better rules. If it does, it'll be writing them about an industry it now associates with the other party's corruption hearings.

What this means for you

If you're building on a licensed stablecoin, assume the rules that matter for the next two years get written under oversight pressure. The GENIUS rule still lands January 18. Expect more scrutiny of who gets approved and who they're connected to, and check whether your issuer has any tie to World Liberty, USD1 or the deals now headed for hearings.

If you're in BD or partnerships, run a political-exposure check on counterparties the way you'd run a sanctions check. A partner whose growth story depends on administration favor is carrying risk it didn't price.

If you work in policy or government affairs, the play for 2027 is distance. Separate the industry's agenda from the family's businesses in every meeting, and be the people asking for a strong ethics provision.

If you're deciding where to build, the part of this industry that survived the week without a sponsor is the part anyone can verify (aka Open Money). Weight your roadmap toward it.

Sources

[1] The Block. "Former Sen. Sherrod Brown defeats Jon Husted, dealing a blow to crypto PAC Fairshake," November 3, 2026. Race call time, Fairshake's $30 million, Stand With Crypto ratings, Agriculture Committee prospects, Brown unlikely to sponsor crypto bills. https://theblock.co/news/regulation/2026-11-03-sherrod-brown-defeats-jon-husted-432495

[2] The Hill. Fairshake confirms $30 million against Brown; about $40 million spent against him in 2024, September 21, 2026. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/6101833-crypto-fairshake-sherrod-brown-ohio/amp/

[3] Cointelegraph. Turner Wright, "Crypto PAC spends $11M to oppose Sherrod Brown in Ohio," September 28, 2026. Defend American Jobs' $11.4 million per FEC filing, 2024 spending of about $41 million, 2024 result. https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-industry-spending-ohio-senate-race-sherrod-brown

[4] Al Jazeera. "Democratic Party wins US Senate in 2026 midterm elections," November 4, 2026. Seven flips, majority of at least 54. https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/4/democratic-party-flips-us-senate-in-2026-midterm-elections

[5] Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance. Teresa Xie and Scott Patterson, "Crypto's Trump-Fueled Washington Boom Reaches Its Endgame," November 7, 2026. Campbell, Minehardt and Kim quotes; Warren, Waters and Brown committee prospects; GENIUS repeal and agency rulemaking; bipartisan-path caveat. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/crypto-trump-fueled-washington-boom-130000761.html

[6] Cointelegraph. Scaramucci interview at SALT London, November 5, 2026. "Singular reason," ethics provision, "culpability on both sides," September 15 vote of 49 to 50. https://cointelegraph.com/news/scaramucci-trump-memecoins-clarity-act-failure

[7] The Block, citing Bloomberg. "Trumps add $1.4 billion in crypto-related assets to family fortune since inauguration," January 20, 2026. Realized proceeds above $1 billion, $3.8 billion in locked founder tokens. https://www.theblock.co/news/business/2026-01-20-trumps-add-1-4-billion-usd-crypto-assets-to-family-fortune-since-inauguration-386237

[8] SpazioCrypto, summarizing Reuters' October 27, 2026 analysis (data through October 20). $176 million across 100-plus races, about $150.8 million from Fairshake and affiliates, $10.1 million against Stratton. Reuters original not accessed directly. https://en.spaziocrypto.com/usa/crypto-spending-us-elections-176-million-fairshake-2026/

[9] Molly White, Citation Needed. "Crypto super PACs and the 2026 midterms," February 20, 2026. Roughly $130 million spent in 2024; quotes. https://www.citationneeded.news/crypto-super-pacs-2026-midterms/

[10] crypto.news. "Democrats target crypto industry ties to Trump family in planned probes," November 4, 2026. Garcia report, Schiff letter on Binance and the Abu Dhabi fund, citing Bloomberg Government on lobbying workload. https://crypto.news/democrats-crypto-industry-trump-family-probes/

[11] Bloomberg Government. Cristiano Lima-Strong, "Democrats Raring to Probe Trump Crypto Ties if They Win Midterms," August 19, 2026. Sherman quote. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/democrats-raring-to-probe-trump-crypto-ties-if-they-win-midterms

[12] TRM Labs, Binance hack report, October 29, 2026. World Liberty's freeze of 27.8 million USD1. https://www.trmlabs.com/resources/blog/north-korea-steals-usd-6-36-billion-from-binance-in-the-largest-hack-in-history

***A note on the $300 million headline for the math nerds: it adds the roughly $130 million crypto PACs spent in the 2024 cycle to Reuters' $176 million count for 2026 through October 20. The two tallies use different methods, so you might have a case if you think this week's H1 is click bait)