According to a Public Citizen study, outside political organizations associated with the cryptocurrency business have raised over $102 million to support politicians who support digital assets in the 2019 U.S. congressional elections.
Conferring to Public Citizen, only two other super PACs have raised as much money as the cryptocurrency industry this election year.
The funds gathered by super PACs sponsored by the cryptocurrency business demonstrate how corporations in the space are trying to sway policy in their favor as the industry comes under closer scrutiny from politicians and authorities like the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Giving to the research, direct corporate expenditures, mostly from Coinbase (COIN.O), opens new tab, and Ripple Labs, account for almost $54 million of the cryptocurrency industry’s political war fund.
The remaining funds are provided by venture capitalists and cryptocurrency executives: $11 million each from Andreessen Horowitz founders, $5 million from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the creators of Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange, and $1 million from Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase.
Super PACs funded by cryptocurrency have announced that they would concentrate their expenditure on the U.S. Senate contests in Ohio and Montana in November, where Democrats Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown are running for reelection. As members of the Senate Banking Committee, Brown and Tester have both voiced criticism of cryptocurrencies, pointing out that some organizations, like Hamas, use them.
