General Discussion

Close your eyes and make a list of the most important issues in the 2024 election. Maybe you thought of the cost of living, abortion, immigration, democracy, climate change, gun violence, the war in Gaza, the Supreme Court. If you’re like the vast majority of voters, the word you probably didn’t think of is “cryptocurrency.”

But in the last year, the crypto industry quietly became the biggest corporate spender of the entire 2024 election. According to a report from the nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen, nearly half of the $274 million in corporate money contributed during this year’s elections came from crypto firms. For comparison, the second biggest spender, Koch Industries — the corporation made famous by Jane Mayer’s opus Dark Money — gave $40 million to its Super PAC, Americans for Prosperity Action. Koch’s firm and employee PAC only put around $6 million toward electing Republicans to Congress.

After its 2024 spending spree, crypto industry cash is poised to account for a staggering 15 percent of all known corporate contributions made since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United, the watchdog group found.

The sheer scale of the spending “is unprecedented and unlike anything that we have seen before,” says Rick Claypool, who authored the report for Public Citizen. He likens it to a “political money Death Star that they’re just sort of aiming at the candidates and races.” The industry’s donations appear to be both about achieving its narrow policy agenda — a demand for light-touch regulation in Washington — as well as striking fear into candidates’ hearts about the possibility they’ll spend against them.

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