Crypto's super PAC named its donors, its bill and its target

On the afternoon of September 15, the Senate voted 49 to 50 on whether to move ahead with the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the crypto industry's bill to decide which regulator oversees it. It needed 60. Several Republicans joined the Democrats against it, American Banker reported. Within days, Fairshake, the industry's super PAC, said it would spend $30M against Sherrod Brown, the former Senate Banking chairman trying to win back an Ohio seat. Its affiliate's first Ohio expenditure was dated September 22, Citation Needed found in the filings. By Election Day, two crypto committees had reported $64M in Ohio's general election, 15% of all the outside money in the most expensive Senate race in the country.

Here is the argument of this essay. Most of the money in this election arrived wrapped: a nonprofit behind a super PAC behind a committee with a local name. Crypto's did not. Three companies gave almost every itemized dollar to one committee, the committee said in public what it wanted and whom it was against, and the filings show the sequence of dates. Disclosure, the law's whole answer to outside money, worked here about as well as it ever will. That is what makes this the week's most useful money trail: it shows what knowing who paid buys a voter, and how little else the rules ask of an industry that spent a third of this year's budget on one Senate seat, against the same person it spent against in 2024, over the committee that writes its rules.

1. Two hops from an Ohio ad to a company

The name on most of the crypto ads in Ohio was Defend American Jobs, which reported $37M for Jon Husted and $20M against Brown. The ads for Husted typically did not mention crypto at all, Americans for Financial Reform noted; one attacked Brown on the gas tax and Social Security. Defend American Jobs is a wrapper too, but a thin one. Its own donor list in FEC receipts is almost empty: $275K itemized against $107M in reported receipts. The rest came from Fairshake, the parent committee that runs it as its Republican-side affiliate (CoinDesk, Decrypt). Fairshake's donors are not hidden. Through October 14 it itemized $98M in gifts, and 99% of that came from three operating companies: Ripple, Coinbase and Andreessen Horowitz's management company (Exhibit 1). The second Ohio committee, Digital Freedom Fund, ends one hop up at the Winklevoss brothers' investment firm and Kraken. Every chain here ends where our rules say a chain should: at a company or a named person. No nonprofit, no LLC we could not open.

The same companies show up one layer further in: in the lobbying filings. Coinbase reported $19M in federal lobbying from 2021 through 2026, Ripple $6.5M, and the Blockchain Association, the trade group both belong to, $9.8M; the crypto clients we track reported $40M between them (lobbying clients). And the bill they lobbied for is the one the money followed. The House passed the Clarity Act on July 17, 2025, 294 to 134, with 78 Democrats in favor (our vote page). When Fairshake announced its slate of 32 House incumbents to defend in October, 19 Republicans and 13 Democrats, all of them had voted to advance that bill, Decrypt reported.

2. Where the rest of the $154M went

Ohio was the network's biggest effort by far, but not its only one. Across its three committees, Fairshake, Defend American Jobs and its Democratic-side affiliate Protect Progress, it reported $154M in independent expenditures this cycle, 38% of it in primaries, where a few million dollars goes further than in a general election. Exhibit 2 lists the eight biggest efforts. The pattern is an industry fund, not a party fund: it backed Republicans in Alabama and Kentucky and Democrats in Texas, Maryland and Georgia, mostly in primaries they went on to win, and it spent $10M against Juliana Stratton in Illinois's Democratic Senate primary, which she won (AP). In Nebraska its affiliate put $13M against the independent Dan Osborn; Pete Ricketts held the seat. Nothing in these records says the money decided any of those races, and this essay does not claim it did.

3. What the rules ask of an industry fund

Two rules produce this picture. The first is Citizens United, which since 2010 has let a corporation spend without limit on elections as long as it does so independently of the candidates. Ripple, Coinbase and Andreessen Horowitz did not need a nonprofit or a shell to give; they wrote checks from the company and the checks were reported. The second is disclosure itself. A super PAC must itemize its donors, and the law's theory, upheld in the same decision, is that a voter who knows the source can weigh the message. In Ohio the source was knowable, and reporters printed it for two months.

What the rules do not do is distinguish between a donor and a party to the outcome. The Clarity Act would decide which agency regulates the companies that funded the ads; the committee that stalled the Senate version is the one Brown used to chair and, The Wall Street Journal reported this week, the one Elizabeth Warren is expected to chair in January, an appointment not yet final. Fairshake spent about $40M helping to unseat Brown in 2024, by Citation Needed's count, and $56M against him this year by CoinDesk's, a third of the $154M it says it spent on ads in 2026. Nothing in the record calls that anything but lawful. It is also not a thing the record was built to notice.

4. The case for the industry fund

Fairshake's own account deserves its strongest form. It says it "has always been and always will be an issue-focused organization" that backs "pro-crypto candidates who support American innovation in both parties" (spokesman Geoff Vetter, in CoinDesk), and its exhibits bear that out: Democrats in Texas, Maryland and Georgia got its money alongside Republicans. Its stated goal is "a clearer regulatory and legal framework" for companies building on blockchains (Fairshake), a goal that passed the House with 78 Democratic votes. Coinbase's policy chief, Kara Calvert, said after the vote that "the election wasn't a referendum on crypto" (Daily Caller). And unlike the leadership nonprofits that moved more money this fall, every dollar here was reported under a company's name. Any industry, a union or a pharmaceutical maker, may do exactly this; crypto did it in the open.

The critics' answer is narrower than it sounds. Mark Hays of Americans for Financial Reform said the industry "has some soul searching to do when it comes to how they approach politics" (CoinDesk); Senator Ruben Gallego, who led the Democrats' ethics talks on the bill, said crypto groups "better go talk to Sherrod Brown first" before trying again (Daily Caller). Brown's own line in September was "I'll be damned if crypto billionaires decide this race" (International Business Times). None of that is a dispute about the facts of the chain. It is a dispute about whether a regulated industry's bid to pick its regulator's overseers should be treated like any other speech. The law, as it stands, says yes.

Also this week: California's billionaire tax

Committees opposing Proposition 40, a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California's billionaires, raised $170M by the state's latest export, about five times the $33M raised by the committee supporting it; the largest source, Building a Better California, gave $159M. In the unofficial count the measure was behind; the state certifies results by December 11. Details on our ballot measures page.

Back to Ohio

Brown takes his seat in January, and if the Journal's reporting holds, the Banking Committee he once led will be chaired by the industry's most persistent critic. The committee that produced a 49-to-50 vote in September now has the industry's most expensive target sitting in the chamber. Fairshake, for its part, said it "played a meaningful role in winning competitive races across the country in 2026, and we will do it again in 2028" (CoinDesk), with about $56M already on hand. The records do not say the ads changed a single vote in Ohio. They say who paid, which is all they were built to say, and they say the fund that paid is already financed for the next vote on the same bill. We will update the Ohio race page when the December 3 reports arrive.

What we could not verify

Our receipts file itemizes $98M of Fairshake's $202M in funding (48% coverage); FinTech Weekly's read of the same filings puts Coinbase's gifts, including from its Coinbase Commerce unit, at $52M and adds $12M each from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz personally (FinTech Weekly), none of which our dataset shows. The transfers from Fairshake to its two affiliates are not itemized in our data; we rely on reporting that describes them as affiliates. The $56M cash figure and the $154M spending total are Fairshake's statements as reported by CoinDesk, not filings we read. Reuters' and CNBC's post-election pieces could not be loaded and are not cited. Warren's chairmanship is reported as expected, not decided.

What this does and doesn't show

These records show which companies funded the committees that spent in Ohio and elsewhere, through October 14, and when. They do not show that any company's dollars paid for a particular ad, since super PAC money is pooled; they do not show that any spending changed a result or a vote; and they do not show why any donor gave, beyond what the donor or its committee said in public. Lobbying totals are what clients reported, not what they spent on this bill alone. California figures are money raised, not spent, and the count is unofficial.

This week on Daily FTM

• November 5: Outside groups put $315M behind Paxton. Talarico won.
• November 6: AI super PACs spent 83% of their money in primaries

The week ahead

November 9: Congress returns for the lame-duck session; stopgap funding runs out on December 11. Further out: the Georgia runoff on December 1, and the December 3 reports.

Sources

• FEC independent-expenditure and receipts files, through October 14, via our super PAC pages; Senate LDA filings via our lobbying pages; roll calls via our votes pages.
• American Banker, "Crypto market structure bill fails in Senate vote, 49-50," September 15, 2026.
• Citation Needed (Molly White), "A crypto and AI money guide to election night," November 3, 2026.
• CoinDesk, "Crypto's powerhouse super PAC suffers costly setback as Democrats sweep Congress," November 4, 2026.
• CoinDesk, "Crypto PACs made big Republican push in final weeks before November 3 election," November 1, 2026.
• International Business Times, "Crypto Groups Spent $63 Million To Stop Sherrod Brown. Ohio Voters Sent Him Back To The Senate.," November 4, 2026.
• Americans for Financial Reform, "Crypto Spends Big Bucks in the Buckeye State," November 2, 2026.
• Decrypt, "Crypto Super PAC Fairshake Pours Millions More Into Defeating Sherrod Brown," October 17, 2026.
• crypto.news, citing The Wall Street Journal, "Crypto critic Elizabeth Warren expected to chair Senate Banking, likely to focus on crypto rules," November 6, 2026.
• The Daily Caller, "Crypto Industry Sees Its Most Vocal Enemies Claw Back Power," November 8, 2026.
• FinTech Weekly, "CLARITY Act Campaign Finance: Who Funds the Industry Deciding Its Own Fate," March 16, 2026.
• DL News, "Crypto loses Illinois Senate vote but Fairshake Super PAC vows to fight on with $221m war chest ahead of 2026 midterms," March 18, 2026.
• PBS NewsHour (Associated Press), "Cryptocurrency and AI industries tested their influence in Illinois. It didn't go well," March 18, 2026.
• Fairshake, "Fairshake (committee website)," November 9, 2026.
• U.S. Supreme Court, "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission," January 21, 2010.
• Federal Election Commission, "Post-general report due December 3, 2026," November 9, 2026.
• Outside sources retrieved November 9, 2026.