Some of the most powerful and monied businesses in the industry are banding together in a push to get crypto on Congress’s agenda.
Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, Circle, Ripple, Kraken, Paradigm, and other crypto titans have committed $78 million to a PAC, dubbed Fairshake, as of the fourth quarter of 2024, they announced on Monday.
The PAC has already allocated almost $300,000 to congressional candidates, according to filings registered with the Federal Elections Commission. So far, it has spent the most money on Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a crypto industry darling, with $126,626 forked out in late September for media campaigns for the congressman. (McHenry, however, announced in early December that he would not seek reelection.)
Other recipients have included Representatives Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), and Tom Emmer (R-Minn.).
“As I’ve spent more time with lawmakers, it has become more apparent that the only way to counteract the lobbies of the big banks and big tech is to show that crypto and blockchain can be a force, too,” Chris Dixon, founder of Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto offshoot, wrote in a blog post announcing the creation of Fairshake.
Other contributors to the PAC include well-known crypto celebrities, such as Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley, and storied venture capitalist Fred Wilson.
This newly announced coalition of crypto money comes a little more than a year after the fall of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried, who was previously seen as the face of crypto in Washington, D.C., and briefly one of the industry’s largest political donors.
While Bankman-Fried is now in jail and has been convicted of fraud, his crypto industry counterparts are still arguing that the current regulatory framework does not adequately address what they position as a new and innovative industry that falls outside the scope of the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose recent suite of lawsuits against prominent crypto firms has prompted calls for Congress to intervene.
Lawmakers, however, have been slow to move forward a variety of crypto-focused bills—including recent hope for stablecoin legislation—as internal division in the House of Representatives and the Senate has put crypto on the back burner.
As for Coinbase, Fairshake and their broader lobbying effort is just part of their ongoing project to make crypto top of mind for the American public. "An all-of-the-above strategy is ultimately what we're pursuing," Faryar Shirzad, chief policy officer at the publicly traded company, told Fortune.
Update, Dec. 18, 2023: Added in comment from Shirzad.