Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz are funding heavyweights in the 2024 elections.
The three companies and their staffs have donated about $136 million to Fairshake, a pro-crypto super PAC, according to an analysis from DL News.
That’s about 84% of almost $162 million in contributions sent through June to the PAC, a political action committee that can raise unlimited funds to spend indirectly on political campaigns.
Buried beneath the tens of millions from crypto billionaires are a spattering of donations from the crypto proletariat.
We all know who the biggest donors are, so who are the randos?
Named donors
The Federal Election Commission requires committees to disclose the names of contributors who donated $200 or more, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks the flow of money in American politics.
For Fairshake, there’s only about $3,600 in unitemized individual contributions, or donations less than $200, to which the PAC doesn’t have to attribute names.
There are only 44 named donors, and only nine donated less than $1,000, according to an analysis by DL News.
The smaller fish include a real estate broker outside New York City, a software developer in Oklahoma, and a marketer in North Carolina.
When DL News called Ryan Wilday, who lives near Seattle, he was surprised that he was one of the few listed in the FEC’s donor database for the super PAC.
“The Winklevosses didn’t call me up and have me over for coffee or anything like that,” he said, referencing the billionaire twins who co-founded Gemini, a crypto exchange and custodian, and donated $5 million to Fairshake.
Wilday describes himself as a “recovering industrial designer.” He now trades crypto and regular stocks, options, and futures for a living.
He also writes for a newsletter and provides analysis for Seeking Alpha, a financial news site.
“Obviously, I’m very pro crypto,” he said. “I am saddened by the position of politicians that are against crypto, and I will do anything to stop this.”
He donated $500 to Fairshake in December.
When asked how he felt rubbing shoulders on a list with some of crypto’s most high-powered executives, he was humble.
“I didn’t come from big money, and I don’t roll with big money,” he said. “I just care about the space.”
Making waves
Branon Thames, who lives in Tampa, similarly didn’t donate big money.
He’s the executive partner at Thames & Associates, which represents different manufacturers in the water utility business, like companies that make pipes or those that produce “post hydrants and flushing devices.”
Thames is a Bitcoin maxi, and he’s frustrated that President Joe Biden’s administration has proposed a tax on Bitcoin miners.
“I just want sensible, logical, calm, regulation that has a period of comment,” he told DL News.
Most of the donors to Fairshake, like Coinbase or Ripple, deal with “shitcoins,” a pejorative Bitcoiners use to describe other cryptocurrencies.
Thames recognises that joining up with “shitcoiners” puts him in bed with non-believers. “It is a weird dynamic,” he said.
Still, in June, he donated $500 to Fairshake, partly, he said, because it was one of the few ways he can politically promote the cause of Bitcoin at the federal level.
“This was the first year that I’ve ever donated to any political candidate or any kind of group for politics,” he said, adding later: “I’m not making any waves by any means. It just feels good to be able to at least try to take a stand.”
And he’s right about not making waves. According to an analysis from DL News, only about 2% of all donations through June to Fairshake were less than $1 million.
Ben Weiss is a Dubai Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at bweiss@dlnews.com.
