This week’s U.S. election, like any other, had its winners and losers. But you’d be hard pressed to find a bigger winner coming out of Tuesday night than Fairshake.
The crypto super PAC, funded by the likes of Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz, didn’t just win big on a handful of high-stakes, marquee fights. It ran the board, defying toss-up odds to elect almost every single Democrat and Republican it supported.
In rural counties, exurban suburbs, and densely populated cities, one throughline overruled party politics: candidates backed by crypto money won.
To give a sense of the scale of Fairshake’s domination: The PAC backed 68 candidates. Most of those up for election on Tuesday won. But what's particularly impressive is its success rate when big money was on the line.
The PAC donated $1 million or more to 22 congressional candidates with elections on Tuesday—11 Democrats and 11 Republicans. The majority of those candidates faced hotly contested races that came down to razor thin margins. And with the exception of only two close races, which have yet to be called, every single one of those Fairshake-backed candidates has either already won their race or appears poised to cruise to victory.
“I am absolutely stunned,” one D.C. insider who closely followed Fairshake’s performance told Decrypt. “I don't know of a political super PAC that has a 98% success rate.”
That hit rate was by no means guaranteed even days ago. Crypto companies poured some $300 million into Fairshake in hopes of changing the beleaguered industry’s precarious regulatory position—an unprecedented spending streak that amounted to a Hail Mary survival strategy.
Now that gamble appears to have paid off so handsomely that its implications may reverberate far beyond crypto.
“The super PAC thesis has never been validated to this degree,” the D.C. insider said. “And never so clearly on one issue.”
Many other industries are likely to take note, the source continued, that crypto invested $300 million into a concerted lobbying push, and is now likely poised to reap untold rewards.
“The ROI [return on investment] of that is going to be 100x,” they said.
Multiple policy experts who spoke with Decrypt said it is now effectively a settled matter that opposing the crypto industry is not worth the political capital for lawmakers in either major party.
“There have been consequences to being anti-crypto that I think were far more significant than anybody imagined,” Sheila Warren, the CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, an industry lobbying group, said.
Virtually the only notable crypto-hostile politician who will remain in power in 2025 is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who cruised to re-election Tuesday night after defeating John Deaton, an avid crypto defender.
In a twist of irony, now that Fairshake has unseated Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Warren herself may be poised to become the top-ranking Democrat on the all-powerful Senate Banking Committee.
On one hand, Republicans handily won the Senate this week, as well as the White House and, as is looking increasingly likely, the House—meaning Warren’s influence will be diminished. On the other, though, crypto legislation will likely need some level of bipartisan support in a closely divided Congress.
Regardless, other policy experts believe that this election’s extraordinary showing has ushered in a sort of graduation for the crypto industry—from an experimental sector to a permanent mainstay on Capitol Hill.
“We've made it, and now we can compare ourselves to the other mature industries out there,” Digital Chamber President Cody Carbone told Decrypt. “We will not be taken lightly anymore.”