Crypto spending big but thinking small on the campaign trail

Crypto still thinking small
I'll give the crypto industry this much: they're not giving up, our Claire Williams reports. After the rather public failure of their attempt to get a law passed regulating digital assets, the industry is keeping its checkbook open in an attempt to influence November's Congressional elections and, I imagine, get something passed in the next Congress.

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It's not exactly clear how much money the industry has donated in total (put a pin in that, I want to come back to it), but it's several million at least. The crypto lobbying vessel Fairshake (which in turn gets most of its money from Coinbase, Ripple, and the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz) has donated at least $1 million to three Republicans in the House: French Hill (chair of the Financial Services Committee), Bill Huizenga and Bryan Steil.

Still, observers think the spending is more defensive than offensive. The industry sees the math of how the election is going and is not so much trying to get "its" people elected than it is trying to keep some of its people in seats in order to stanch any backlash after whatever expected wave of Democrats take back the House and possibly even the Senate. 

I don't think it's going to matter. I've said this before in this space but the lack of regulatory clarity is not the thing holding crypto back. The thing holding crypto back is that rather than build any useful product the industry went all in on the casino model and thus appeals only to degenerate gamblers, Wall Street traders and other assorted YOLO'ers. It's no coincidence that the crypto and prediction market worlds have such heavy overlap.