On November 6, according to data from the Stand With Crypto website initiated by Coinbase, a total of 247 candidates who support cryptocurrency won seats in the House of Representatives, and only 113 members opposed to cryptocurrency. The Stand With Crypto website also shows that the Senate is also biased in favor of cryptocurrency, with 15 supporters and 10 opponents.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong praised the results of the congressional election as a watershed moment for cryptocurrency, writing on Twitter: "Welcome to the most cryptocurrency-supportive new members of Congress in U.S. history."
The House of Representatives has more members and represents diversity, and usually initiates legislation, while the Senate is smaller and more conservative, and usually deliberates proposals initiated by the House of Representatives. Since both the House of Representatives and the Senate tend to support cryptocurrencies, the path to favorable legislation may be smoother, and crypto industry insiders are optimistic about the potential for supportive regulation in the U.S. Congress in the future.
To make this happen, we cannot do without the real money of those working in the Crypto industry.
$40 million to support the campaign, crypto lobbying funds become the "key tie breaker" for the Republicans to win the Senate
On November 6, Ohio auto dealer and blockchain entrepreneur, Republican Bernie Moreno defeated Senate Banking Committee Chairman, strong cryptocurrency critic, Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, giving the Democrats a 51-49 victory over the Republicans in the Senate. Moreno's victory can be said to guarantee that the Republicans will regain the upper house of Congress, which is also seen as one of the most expensive Senate races this year.
Winning with money
The campaign was supported not only by Trump and his campaign team, but also by several crypto companies, corporate executives and investors, who spent $40 million to help Moreno win the seat. According to Coindesk, Federal Election Commission documents show that the largest single campaign expenditure from the digital asset industry was funded by Fairshake PAC and its affiliated organizations (especially Defend American Jobs), far exceeding the organization's initial $12 million investment in Ohio. These funds are mainly used to support Moreno's advertising campaigns, which is the most money any group has invested in this key battlefield so far.
Ohio voters' attitudes toward Moreno have improved significantly since Fairshake entered the race in August. An industry poll showed Moreno's approval rating among likely voters in early August at 39.6 percent, compared with Brown's 48.3 percent. And according to ongoing polling statistics from the political analysis website FiveThirtyEight.com, Moreno's approval rating has increased by 2.3 percentage points since Fairshake launched his operation in Ohio.
Until November 6, Bernie Moreno won the majority support in the final election, winning a key battle and winning a majority for the Republican Party. Meanwhile, Senator Tim Scott (Republican of South Carolina) may become the next chairman. Although Scott's crypto stance has long been low-key, he recently publicly supported digital asset innovation at the Bitcoin 2024 event in Nashville and said at the SALT conference in Wyoming that if he is elected chairman, he may set up a dedicated crypto subcommittee.
Super PACs like Fairshake can only support candidates through so-called independent expenditures — ads and other services not directly affiliated with or approved by a campaign. In some races, Fairshake has spent millions on negative ads against candidates who don’t support pro-crypto policies, but in this case, the ads were positive and aimed at supporting Moreno.
Sold the company and went all in on blockchain, who is Bernie Moreno?
What is gratifying is that Bernie Moreno, who won this key seat, is not just a pro-crypto politician, but a real Crypto practitioner.
Reagan McCarthy, a spokesperson for Bernie Moreno, once told (The Washington Post), "Unlike Sherrod Brown, who doesn't know the difference between a blockchain and a chainsaw, Bernie has a deep understanding of this technology, knows how to ensure it grows in the United States, and will work to ensure that the United States leads the world."
In 2019, Moreno, a luxury car dealership magnate based in Cleveland, sold all but two of his seven auto dealerships to support his other company, Crypto Project Ownum, which provides digitized car title products.
Moreno launched a project called "Blockland" in 2018 to make Cleveland a blockchain technology center. At the same time, he founded the crypto project Ownum. Ownum is engaged in the business of developing technology products that can replace paper-based government processes through digitization.
In April 2019, Moreno was appointed to the Ohio Innovation Authority’s executive committee. At the time of Moreno’s appointment, Ownum announced its first product, a paperless blockchain project for vehicle titles called CHAMPtitles.
Moreno also served as a consultant to the Ohio Department of Motor Vehicles, during which time CHAMPtitles was offered the opportunity to work with the DMV to digitize the vehicle title transfer process, a collaboration that provided CHAMPtitles with significant business growth opportunities.
In September 2019, Moreno was nominated to the board of directors of MetroHealth, the Cleveland public hospital system. In October, Ownum’s second product, Vital Chain, which provides blockchain-based birth and death certificates, successfully reached a cooperation with MetroHealth and became its first customer.
Moreno later resigned from the board as he prepared for his first Senate election, but these past events were used by Moreno's political opponents as evidence that he was not a "political outsider."
The ratio of friends to enemies is close to 1:3. Welcome to the most pro-crypto Congress in American history.
When Trump won 270 votes, the U.S. crypto industry was celebrating a major victory. After the victory, a meme of Gary Gensler, the current chairman of the SEC, quickly spread in the crypto community.
This is because of a promise Trump made to the crypto community during this year’s election: if he is elected the 47th President of the United States, he will fire the SEC chairman, who is hostile to the regulation of the crypto industry.
In order to win this election, Trump frantically showed goodwill to people in the crypto industry during this year's campaign and became a Bitcoin activist. At the Bitcoin 2024 conference held in Nashville in July, Trump mentioned that if he could win the election, he would formulate a series of pro-crypto policies to ensure that the United States would become the world's crypto center and Bitcoin superpower. This includes firing the current SEC Chairman Gray Gensler, appointing a presidential advisory committee on cryptocurrencies, and using Bitcoin as a strategic Bitcoin reserve for the United States.
Related reading: (Trump becomes the first “Bitcoin president” in American history)
After Trump won the election, many industry insiders began to be optimistic about the industry's more clear and supportive regulatory policies in the future. Of course, replacing a pro-crypto president and firing an anti-crypto chairman cannot fundamentally reverse the pressure that cryptocurrencies face at the political level in the United States. What really makes institutions and various practitioners optimistic and even excited is that the United States is about to usher in a brand new "pro-crypto Congress."
According to Stand With Crypto, 261 candidates who support cryptocurrency won seats in the House of Representatives in this election, while only 116 members opposed cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, the new Senate is more inclined to support cryptocurrency, with 17 supporters and 12 opponents.
After the election results came out, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong praised the results of the congressional election as a watershed in the development of cryptocurrency on social media, calling it "the most supportive of cryptocurrency Congress in U.S. history."
Of course, not all of Congress is overwhelmingly in favor of cryptocurrencies. In the Senate, despite the massive support from the crypto industry for pro-crypto Republican candidate John Deaton, he ultimately lost to Elizabeth Warren, who has more political resources and experience. This long-time “enemy” of the crypto industry has always advocated for stronger regulation, and after successfully being re-elected as a Democratic senator in Massachusetts, she has become one of the few “tough nuts” for the crypto industry in the Senate.
In fact, before this election, the Republican Party had already begun to work towards forming a "pro-crypto government." Poll data shows that 28% of Republicans currently hold or have purchased cryptocurrencies, and 60% of Republicans prefer Congress to clarify crypto regulations. The FIT21 bill passed by Congress this year was also led and promoted by the Republican Party.
In May this year, the FIT21 bill was passed by the House of Representatives with 279 votes to 136. The bill established a regulatory framework for digital assets and may become one of the most far-reaching bills on Crypto. The full name of FIT21 is the "21st Century Financial Innovation and Technology Act". The key is to regulate the regulatory framework for digital assets and provide guidance for more crypto assets to apply for spot ETFs and compliance in the future.
After successfully controlling both the Senate and the House, the Republican Party will undoubtedly become a powerful party that no previous government has ever been able to match. In any case, the new Congress has paved the way for the passage of a series of crypto-friendly bills.
American politics enters the era of "cryptocurrency"
It is no coincidence that the Republican Party is leaning towards the pro-crypto camp and Congress is leaning towards the Republican Party. What is certain is that American politics is entering a new "cryptocurrency" era.
In June of this year, Trump held a fundraiser at the home of David Sachs, a friend of Peter Thiel, in the wealthy district of San Francisco. During the event, Trump portrayed himself as the "cryptocurrency president", slammed the Democratic Party's regulatory hostility to the industry, and said that he would stop Gensler's crackdown on the crypto industry "within an hour of taking office." In the end, Trump raised $12 million from the event.
Related reading: (Silicon Valley turns right: Peter Thiel, A16Z, and the political ambitions of cryptocurrency)
According to OpenSecret, a political fundraising data tracking platform, crypto PACs have spent more than $133 million on elections this year, intervening in 51 races, mostly to help candidates who promise not to heavily regulate cryptocurrencies. The three main PACs are Fairshake, Protect Progress, and Defend American Jobs.
Fairshake’s ads almost never mention cryptocurrency, blockchain or the technology industry. Instead, they focus on the candidates — touting Moreno’s family and his views on the energy industry, for example, as sharing Trump’s views.
In February 2024, Fairshake spent $10 million to attack the integrity of Katie Porter, who was running for a vacant California Senate seat because Porter had voted against a pro-cryptocurrency bill. As a result, Porter lost the primary to Congressman Adam Schiff.
The cryptocurrency industry sees this as validation of its strategy of spending money to support friends as well as to destabilize enemies.
Fairshake also contributed to the defeats of New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush in the primary, investing $2 million against Bowman and $1.4 million against Bush. In the Utah Republican primary, Fairshake spent $3.4 million to support John Curtis, defeating Trent Staggs, and the crypto-friendly Curtis won the Utah Senate seat.
Since the beginning of this year, American Crypto companies and investment institutions, led by Coinbase, Ripple, a16z, and Jump Crypto, have finally ushered in a foreseeable optimistic outlook for the industry by spending money.
Just two days before Election Day, a16z partner Chris Dixon posted on social media that he had donated more than $23 million in additional funds to Fairshake and its affiliated political action committee (PAC) for the 2026 midterm election cycle.
Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong posted that Coinbase and a16z have provided additional financial support to Fairshake, and Fairshake has invested about $78 million in the 2026 midterm elections. The Stand With Crypto website he founded currently has 1.9 million supporters, and the goal is to increase the number of supporters to 4 million by the 2026 midterm elections.
Armstrong said Stand With Crypto also plans to expand its influence internationally. “The crypto industry hopes to promote similar rules at the G20 or a wider international level. Only through global adoption can cryptocurrencies revolutionize the global financial system and enhance economic freedom.”
In the first half of 2022, the SEC issued the SAB 121 (Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121) bill, forcing banks to stay away from crypto custody business. In April of this year, the anti-SAB 121 bill passed the Senate and the House of Representatives with the joint efforts of both parties, but was vetoed by the current President Biden. With the rise of Trump and his pro-crypto government, the beginning of a new era of cryptocurrency compliance seems to have become an increasingly certain event.
