Investigations
Crypto firms spent $189 million on 2026 midterm elections
More Perfect Union tied the spending to a Senate push for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
Cryptocurrency companies spent $189 million influencing the 2026 midterm elections, according to a June report from Public Citizen that More Perfect Union cited after attending a Senate hearing on the industry's top legislative priority.
Public Citizen found the crypto sector accounted for 37% of the $517 million in tracked corporate political spending so far this cycle, more than the roughly $170 million the industry spent across all of 2024. Fairshake, a super PAC backed by Coinbase and Ripple, received $82.6 million from crypto firms and spent millions backing candidates in competitive primaries.
Foris Dax, the parent company of Crypto.com, ranked among the largest corporate donors. A January FEC filing shows Foris Dax gave MAGA Inc., President Donald Trump's super PAC, $5 million on Jan. 23, 2026. The crypto industry also poured nearly $200 million into races for lawmakers who back the Clarity Act, including more than $9.4 million for Alabama Rep. Barry Moore and more than $7 million for Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr weeks before their primaries.
The legislative target is the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which would divide crypto oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Crypto executives standing beside Trump at a White House press conference this summer framed the bill as consumer protection. Ben McKenzie, who has spent five years tracking crypto fraud, sat down with the channel to walk through the text after the hearing.
McKenzie said the bill bars elected officials from profiting on newly issued digital assets but leaves a gap for ventures that existed before they took office. That would exempt Trump's meme coin and broader crypto holdings from the ethics rules while the Trump family made about $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency in the past year and nearly one million investors lost close to $4 billion on the meme coin alone. The Securities and Exchange Commission has not opened an investigation into those losses.
McKenzie said the Clarity Act would also shift most token oversight to the CFTC, a smaller agency with a few hundred employees, and let traditional banks hold and invest in crypto after years of firewalls kept Wall Street out of the market. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has promoted the bill's investor protections, but McKenzie said the language would water down existing safeguards rather than extend banking-style deposit insurance or fraud recovery to crypto buyers.
The Senate is scheduled to hold a cloture vote on Sept. 15 on whether to advance the bill. Republicans hold 53 seats and need 60 votes to proceed. If the motion fails, comprehensive crypto legislation is unlikely before the 2026 midterms end.
Source video: We Investigated The Most Corrupt Crypto Scam In History (ft. Ben McKenzie)