Three PACs, $288 Million, Zero Unified Strategy
The crypto industry has more political money than almost any other sector in America. It also has no coherent strategy for how to spend it.
Three major PACs now dominate crypto political spending -- and they're increasingly working against each other:
Fairshake ($193 million, backed by Coinbase, Ripple, and a16z) operates as a bipartisan vehicle. It has funded Democratic candidates alongside Republicans, on the theory that crypto needs friends on both sides of the aisle. It is the largest crypto PAC in history and the fifth-largest super PAC across any sector.
Digital Freedom Fund ($21 million, backed by the Winklevoss twins) is explicitly Trump-aligned. It has backed only Republican candidates and has positioned itself as the MAGA-adjacent crypto voice -- competing directly with Fairshake for the same donor base while rejecting its bipartisan logic.
Fellowship PAC ($100 million pledged, backed by Tether and Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick's firm) is the newest and most ideologically specific. It funds only Republican candidates who support the core Bitcoin legislative agenda. It views Fairshake's Democratic funding as diluting crypto's leverage in the GOP.
The fracture weakens everyone. A unified $288 million PAC would be among the most powerful political forces in American history. Three competing PACs with overlapping donor bases and conflicting endorsement strategies means contested primaries, split money, and confused messaging.
The conservative case: Bitcoin needs the Republican Party to win, and winning requires discipline. A three-PAC civil war is not discipline. Watch how this resolves -- or doesn't -- before the midterms.