As the political winds shift for the volatile crypto industry, one of the sector’s staunchest supporters is doubling down on its efforts to support blockchain-friendly candidates in the upcoming U.S. elections.
On Thursday, Chris Dixon, founder and managing partner of a16z crypto—the $7.6 billion digital assets arm of venture capital behemoth Andreessen Horowitz—announced that the firm would donate $25 million to Fairshake, a crypto-focused super PAC, bringing a16z’s total outlay to $47 million. One of the most active VCs in the sector, a16z crypto backs companies from Coinbase to OpenSea, with Dixon recently completing a global book tour for his treatise on blockchain, Read Write Own.
The a16z contribution comes a day after Ripple, another leading crypto company, announced a $25 million donation to Fairshake, which along with two affiliates has raised over $100 million.
While the crypto industry’s advocacy efforts in D.C. have faced rocky prospects following the November 2022 collapse of FTX, and the embarrassing fall from grace of founder and prodigious political donor Sam Bankman-Fried, the sector has enjoyed a resurgence over the past few weeks, including several key legislative wins in Congress and an apparent softening by the White House. Donald Trump has also embraced the sector, recently announcing his support at a crypto event hosted at Mar-a-Lago along with an appearance at a Libertarian party event.
The additional support from a16z to Fairshake reflects a concerted effort by the industry to tip the balance of key congressional races, including that of Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator from Ohio and crypto skeptic who leads the Senate Banking Committee. A recent report from the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen found that digital asset-affiliated super PACs, including Fairshake, have raised the third-most money of all super PACs ahead of the 2024 election. Other Fairshake donors include Coinbase and the Winklevoss twins.
As Dixon noted in an accompanying tweet, the super PAC has backed candidates from both sides of the political aisle, though crypto has been championed more by Republicans over the last year, including House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) shepherding a series of bills. Despite the Republican bias, recent votes have drawn bipartisan support, including a successful legislative effort to overturn a controversial Securities and Exchange Commission bulletin that registered a 60-38 vote in the Senate, though President Joe Biden has threatened to veto it.
That could change given the events of the past two weeks, which saw a surprising about-face by the SEC on pending applications for Ethereum ETFs, which industry analysts expected to be rejected but the agency approved. With Trump’s newfound love of blockchain, some of the louder voices in the industry have pointed to the reversal as a sign that Democrats want to avoid crypto becoming a partisan issue. With Fairshake’s growing war chest and tight races across the country just a few months away, the digital asset sector’s political offensive is just beginning.
