Activity tagged "lobbying"

Posted:

Public Citizen just released a must-read report on the cryptocurrency industry’s spending this election cycle.

Nearly half of all corporate money contributed this cycle has come from cryptocurrency backers!

Key Findings In 2024, crypto corporations have poured over $119 million directly into influencing federal elections, primarily into a non-partisan super PAC dedicated to electing pro-crypto candidates and defeating crypto skeptics. Crypto corporations are by far the dominant corporate political spenders in 2024 as nearly half (48%) of all corporate money contributed during this year’s elections ($248 million so far) came from crypto backers. Koch Industries is a distant second place in 2024. The privately held conglomerate owned by Charles and, formerly, the late David Koch, contributed $25 million to its Koch-controlled Americans for Prosperity Action and $3.25 million toward electing Republicans to Congress. Direct corporate election spending at this scale is unprecedented. Crypto corporations’ total spending in the past three election cycles – $129 million – already amounts to 15% of all known corporate contributions since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United, which total $884 million. 92% of the corporate crypto spending is from 2024. Since Citizens United, the crypto corporations are now second in total election-related spending, trailing only fossil fuel corporations, which have spent $176 million over the past 14 years, including $73 million from Koch Industries. The crypto sector’s Fairshake PAC and its affiliates have received nearly $114 million directly from corporate backers, far more than any other outside spender this cycle. Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity Action, a hybrid PAC, is a distant second, having received nearly $26 million, primarily from Koch Industries. Fairshake’s corporate backing is unprecedented. Though unlimited corporate contributions have been enabled since 2010 by Citizens United, this newcomer is already second only to the super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate in terms of corporate money received. That super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, has received nearly $119 million directly from corporations over the past 14 years, largely from fossil fuel corporations but including many other sectors, including crypto, tobacco, and for-profit prisons.
"Big Crypto, Big Spending: Crypto Corporations Spend an Unprecedented $119 Million Influencing Elections".
Rick Claypool in Public Citizen.
Posted:

Crossposting a comment I made on HackerNews about Follow the Crypto, since I'm seeing a lot of this kind of whataboutism:

The real story here is how much power individuals have over our political landscape. George Soros, for example, has injected more than $125M into the midterm race in 2022[1]. To be clear, this is not a partisan issue; the Kochs raised over $70M last year[2].

I fully agree with you that the broader problem is Citizens United and the ability for corporations and the super wealthy to pour this much money into politics. In fact, I mention this here: FAQ.

I think projects like mine would be extremely valuable for all industries, and I'm enormously grateful to groups like OpenSecrets that do excellent work making a far broader swath of the data more legible. But I am one person without the research team, time, or funding that would be necessary to analyze the data this deeply across industries, and so I focus on crypto (the subject of much of my research and writing).

The code is all open source, and I would be delighted if other projects like this one sprung up. It seems it would be a bit more productive to actually shine a light all the kinds of spending that happen throughout industries and across individuals, rather than using that other spending as a sort of whataboutist argument to dismiss projects like this one that (necessarily) focus on a subset of spending.

If you want to be critical of super PACs, crypto spending is literally a drop in the bucket and completely missing the forest for the trees. There is a story here, but crypto ain't it.

As this project highlights, crypto is far from a "drop in the bucket" when it comes to super PAC fundraising this cycle. The industry has dramatically ramped up its spending compared to previous election years, which is a large part of why I felt it was important to keep an eye on the spending.