Crypto is making a splash in U.S. elections — but chiefly in jabs about industry influence

Crypto is finally being talked about in U.S. political campaigns, but it's certainly not in a light that the industry would choose.

Though digital assets advocates have long referenced a grassroots uprising of crypto-focused voters that can swing elections, the industry's own massive campaign spending has carefully decided against even mentioning the financial technology in the ads it buys for favored candidates. But crypto is having a moment in the midterms, anyway, as the sector's critics paint its political involvement as a venal influence on congressional campaigning.

A number of Democratic candidates have raised crypto as a black mark to suggest improper corporate sway over their political adversaries and more generally as a factor in corruption accusations against President Donald Trump and his administration. In this environment, in which voters are now weighing government corruption as a top political concern, it may carry consequential weight.

In a current campaign ad from Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat seeks to tarnish Trump and his allies by highlighting the billions Trump has made in office and the jet he accepted as a gift from Qatar. The ad also notes that Trump made hundreds of millions of dollars off of his "crypto memecoin," followed by Warner saying: "That's not governing. It's grifting. The corruption needs to stop."

And in former Senator Sherrod Brown's bid to return to the Senate for Ohio, the Democrat has embraced the massive crypto spending against him as a point of favor.

"The crypto/data-center crowd are up to $40 million now," Brown, the former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a recent Pod Save America interview, noting the industry's opposition ads in Ohio were largely bankrolled by a crypto political action committee (Fairshake). "They know I'm going to hold them accountable," Brown said.

Fairshake spent tens of millions trying to get him voted out of office two years ago, and the super PAC started major spending again to keep Brown out. As a result, he offers an us-versus-them (regular voters against tech billionaires) narrative on the campaign trail. The ex-senator frequently lumps crypto and data centers together in his speeches, accusing those tech elements of trying to buy the incumbent Republican opponent Jon Husted's seat "because they know I'll never work for them," Brown said in a campaign video spot.

Spending continues

The industry's dominant super PAC, Fairshake, has spent vast sums of money on trying to get crypto-friendly candidates into Congress, counting a large majority of successes in this year's primaries. They're supporting dozens of incumbents so far in the general election, and opposing Brown with at least $40 million in what may become the most expensive congressional race in U.S. history. The many ads they've purchased nationwide focus on issues the PAC believes will sway voters, and a spokesman confirmed that the crypto group's ads don’t mention crypto, the technology that's paying for them (mostly through the contributions of Coinbase, Ripple and a16z Crypto).

For voters, crypto hasn't yet proven to be a decisive issue, as much as the industry has hoped it would be. A CoinDesk poll released in May showed crypto was very low on voters' list of priorities. (The same survey revealed people didn't trust the Trump administration to oversee digital assets.)

The crypto sector's urgent desire for a U.S. law that governs its markets now faces the November 3 elections. The outcome could shift the U.S. House of Representatives to a Democratic majority, and possibly the Senate, too. That would mean a very different experience on Capitol Hill for crypto lobbyists, and the odds get longer to pass a major bill that the crypto industry can support.

As they try to join what they hope will be a Democrat majority in the House and Senate, Democratic candidates keep banging the crypto drum. When he ran a key committee in the Senate, Brown had the authority to deflect the industry's attempts at legislation, and if he gets back in and finds himself in a similarly powerful role, the situation may be even worse.

As Brown promised in a speech earlier this month on C-SPAN, "They know I'm going to take them on."