Morning Minute: Crypto Gives Up on Congress and Goes After Senators
Plus, a major MetaMask security event has crypto natives on edge as details trickle out.
Two weeks after the Clarity Act died in the Senate, the crypto industry picked its targets. Stand With Crypto, the advocacy group Coinbase started in 2023, named its first Senate endorsements on Wednesday. Their new message: the fight has moved from the Capitol to the campaign trail.
The group is backing Republican Jon Husted against Sherrod Brown, who used to run the Senate Banking Committee and has spent years as one of crypto’s loudest critics. If Brown wins, he gets a powerful seat on the committee that writes the rules for this industry. That’s why Ohio matters more than the other two races combined.
The money behind all this is enormous, but Stand With Crypto doesn’t donate directly. It grades candidates and turns out voters, and its executive director says its three million supporters are now focused entirely on electing pro-crypto candidates. But candidates it rates well tend to attract money from crypto-aligned PACs, and the Fairshake PAC just launched a $30 million campaign against Brown. Total crypto political spending this cycle is approaching $200 million.
As a reminder, the Clarity Act failed 49 to 50 with every Democrat voting against it, over concerns about Trump’s own crypto businesses. And yet Stand With Crypto is backing two more Democrats in the midterms. It’s a slightly counter-intuitive bet, but maybe it will pay off. We will find out soon enough…
