Cryptocurrency industry is spending more than any other to sway California congressional races

As interest groups have flooded northern Orange County with advertising about a hotly competitive congressional race, a new industry has emerged as a major spender: cryptocurrency.

A political action committee called Fairshake, funded by cryptocurrency companies and their investors, has spent more than any other industry group — nearly $2.8 million — to help vulnerable Republican incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Seal Beach) retain her seat in Congress.

The same is true across California, where crypto has spent more than any other business interest in a handful of highly competitive House races. The industry has spent almost $7 million in the last month to boost four Republican incumbents in swing districts in Southern California and the Central Valley, federal campaign finance records show.

Republicans hold a razor-thin majority in the House, and both parties see half a dozen races in California as crucial to their paths to victory.

The sheer amount of crypto spending during such a tight election year has the potential to influence which party controls Congress, said Rick Claypool, a research director at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy nonprofit.

“This scale of election spending is something that no other corporations are doing,” Claypool said. “There have definitely been corporate campaigns and corporate spending, but nothing on this scale, and nothing that is so out in the open ... just radically and transparently transactional.”

The flurry of House spending follows Fairshake’s $10-million advertising blitz in the U.S. Senate primary in the spring, which was designed to bump Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) out of the race. Porter finished third, and Democratic Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) is now facing off against his preferred opponent, Republican Steve Garvey.

The crypto industry has spent 2024 flooding the airwaves with advertising, sending a clear signal to politicians that they could be ousted if they don’t support more crypto-friendly laws in Washington.

Crypto has made up nearly half of political contributions by corporate spenders this year, Claypool said. The nearly $130 million spent by crypto in the last three elections amounts to 15% of all known corporate spending since 2010, when the Supreme Court in its Citizens United decision lifted restrictions on corporate political spending, he said.

The Fairshake super PAC’s biggest donors include the crypto companies Coinbase and Ripple; Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s chief executive; and Bay Area venture capitalists and crypto investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

Cryptocurrencies are virtual currencies, often treated as investments, that are traded through decentralized networks rather than through banks.

“No matter how you slice it, it will be the most pro-crypto Congress ever,” Armstrong said Wednesday in a post on X. He said Coinbase will spend an additional $25 million through Fairshake to elect pro-crypto candidates in the 2026 midterms.

Steel gets the most help from crypto

The Fairshake PAC’s $26 million in spending across the U.S. is split evenly between incumbent House Republicans and Democrats. In California, the group has focused exclusively on helping the GOP. Fairshake declined to comment on its California spending.

In addition to nearly $2.8 million spent on behalf of Steel, the most of any House member, the group has spent more than $1.8 million for Rep. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) in Orange County, $1.3 million for Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in the Central Valley and $1 million for Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Santa Clarita) in the Antelope Valley.

As a super PAC, Fairshake can make independent expenditures on behalf of candidates, but cannot contribute directly to, or coordinate with, their campaigns.

An ad released by Fairshake for Steel this month touts her track record as an advocate for women, but makes no mention of crypto. Steel, meanwhile, has attacked her opponent, Democrat Derek Tran, for his crypto holdings.

The 45th Congressional District has the largest population of people of Vietnamese descent outside Vietnam, and both Steel and Tran are fighting for the support of longtime Little Saigon residents. In one Vietnamese-language mailer this month, Steel sought to tie Tran to Chinese communists such as Mao Zedong, criticizing him for owning “thousands of dollars of cryptocurrency linked to China.”

Tran has said that he owns as much as $145,000 in bitcoin, ethereum and another cryptocurrency through the exchange platform Binance, which was founded in Shanghai but is no longer based there.

Only a handful of congressional representatives own cryptocurrency; Steel does not. Her campaign declined to comment.

In surveys for Stand With Crypto, an industry lobbying group that scores politicians on their crypto positions, both Steel and Tran vowed to support regulations to create clearer laws. The group concluded that Steel, who has cast votes for three bills that the industry supported, “strongly” backs crypto, while Tran “mostly” does.

Orrin Evans, a consultant for Tran, called the crypto spending “concerning” and seemingly “more about keeping the House of Representatives in Republican control than promoting the importance of crypto in driving innovation.”

Crypto’s role in the California Senate race

In the spring, Fairshake dropped more than $10 million on ads that called Porter a fake, an actor and a hypocrite. After Porter finished a distant third behind Schiff and Garvey, the crypto super PAC boasted that her alliance with mentor Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), an antagonist of the industry, had “ended her career in Congress.”

Porter received an F from the Stand With Crypto lobbying group, while Schiff received an A. The group pointed to a statement on Schiff’s campaign website that called for “comprehensive regulatory frameworks” to keep crypto and Web3 companies in the U.S. Web3 is a decentralized internet based around blockchains, the public ledgers that are used to log every cryptocurrency transaction.

Schiff has since voted against two of the industry’s three top priorities in Washington, but the group has maintained his A rating. He voted in favor of a bill known as FIT21, one of the industry’s top priorities, which would shift some crypto regulation from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the smaller and less aggressive Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The bill passed the House in May.

Crypto cash for Democrats

Fairshake has also set up two subsidiary PACs that support politicians of each political party. One PAC, Defend American Jobs, spends for Republicans, and the other, Protect Progress, spends for Democrats — including two Californians.

Through Protect Progress, crypto interests have spent more than $500,000 to help Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) in his reelection bid in the 34th Congressional District, which covers central and northeastern Los Angeles, including Boyle Heights and Koreatown.

Gomez is running against progressive Democrat David Kim, who lost to Gomez by six percentage points in 2020 and more narrowly in 2022. The crypto lobbying group is the race’s second-largest outside spender, after the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, federal filings show.

Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna has seen nearly $110,000 spent on his behalf by the same cryptocurrency group.