In the 2022 and 2024 American elections, the crypto industry spent big. With all of the chaos in Trump 2.0, from ICE raids to exploding boats in the Caribbean to the longest government shutdown in history and fights over the release of the Epstein Files, the public can lose sight of a basic truth: The American president’s personal wealth is now inextricably linked to the viability of cryptocurrency. This should worry you.
Crypto Spending in the 2022 & 2024 Elections
Let’s follow the money. In the 2022 elections, on the record, a trio of crypto bros spent staggering sums: Jeffrey Yass spent over $50 million (mostly in Pennsylvania races), Larry Ellison spent over $30 million (mostly backing Tim Scott), and Peter Thiel spent over $30 million (mostly boosting the candidacy of J.D. Vance to become a U.S. Senator).
But off the record, most crypto campaign funding came from one illegal source: the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its sister firm, a hedge fund called Alameda Research. According to the DOJ, FTX/Alameda spent $100 million in illegal corporate contributions through straw donors in the 2022 election. This scheme was illegal for two reasons. One, corporations are legally barred from giving corporate treasury money to federal candidates; and, two, the use of straw donors violates campaign finance law.
The saga of FTX and Alameda, which I cover in my recent book, Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians, and in my podcast, Democracy & Destiny, was revealed during the prosecution of their founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). By his own admission in the press, SBF supported Democratic candidates on the record, while supporting Republicans with dark money. Although SBF was convicted of securities fraud and received 25-year prison sentence, he was never tried on the alleged campaign finance crimes. However, two of SBF’s business associates, Nishad Singh and Ryan Salame, pleaded guilty to their roles as straw donors. The breadth of this scheme is difficult to overstate, as 1 in 3 members of Congress took money from FTX/SBF. (Interestingly, because this money was the fruit of a crime, the DOJ’s position was that politicians who received the FTX/Alameda money were required to return it to the U.S. Marshals, payments you can now find in the F.E.C. campaign finance database). Most of those elected with FTX money in 2022 returned to Congress in 2024, as incumbents were re-elected at a staggering 96.6% rate.
There was, it is worth noting, nothing particularly new about Bankman-Fried’s straw donor scheme. This is the same crime that earned George Steinbrenner a criminal conviction during Watergate in the 1970s. Steinbrenner gave fake bonuses to the executives in his company and then directed them to pay the bonuses (after taxes) to President Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (better known as CREEP). Steinbrenner was later pardoned for this campaign finance crime by President Reagan.
Despite the public embarrassment engendered by SBF’s criminal trial in 2023, the crypto industry’s political spending was back with a vengeance in 2024. From the outside, it appears that the industry hired better campaign finance lawyers, as companies largely chose to spend money through Super PACs—a tried and true (and legal) method for spending corporate money in politics. A Super PAC, a creature of campaign finance law that was created in 2010 by a D.C. Circuit case called SpeechNow, is allowed to take in and spend unlimited amounts of money so long as the source is not a foreign national. In 2024, the big new player on the Super PAC block was an entity called FairShake PAC, which was funded entirely by the cryptocurrency industry, including money from the Winklevoss twins. FairShake spent close to $200 million in the 2024 election cycle.
This $200 million was on top of the $290 million that Elon Musk spent during the 2024 election, primarily through his Super PAC called America PAC. Musk’s wealth, of course, is not all from crypto. But Musk pitched crypto to during the election to Trump supporters, touting Dogecoin at Trump campaign events in 2024.
Given all the crypto campaign money, 2024 really should be thought of as “the crypto bro election.” And while political scientists sometimes dismiss the importance of campaign spending on political outcomes, it is important to observe just how badly a cash-poor Trump needed this influx of money. As an out-of-power and frequently-sued defendant, in 2024, Trump struggled to find $464 million to post bond in a civil suit after losing a lawsuit brought by the Attorney General of New York, as he had to post a $91.6 million bond after losing a different defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. Tellingly, Trump spent zero dollars on his 2024 re-election effort.
Crypto’s ROI During Trump II
What benefits has the cryptocurrency industry gained during the second Trump Administration and the Republican-controlled 119th Congress? For one, it has had beneficial legislation passed into law with the “Genius Act.” Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has largely given up on regulating cryptocurrency in Trump 2.0, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has conditionally approved five crypto firms for national bank charters.
And finally, President Trump has used his power to pardon convicted criminals from the crypto industry. In late March, Trump pardoned Benjamin Delo, Arthur Hayes, and Samuel Reed, the founders of BitMEX, who had previously pleaded guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) for enabling money laundering through their exchange. Seven months later, on October 23, President Trump also pardoned billionaire Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (“CZ”), who likewise “pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program, in violation of the BSA.” As the then Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said of the crypto exchange, “Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit. Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform.”
Trump’s pardon of CZ raised eyebrows because, as Forbes reported, a May 2025 “deal involving Zhao’s company [Binance] helped boost Trump’s net worth by hundreds of millions of dollars.” Allegedly, Binance helped Trump’s sons, including Barron, launch Trump’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial.
Perhaps most significantly, the cryptocurrency industry that helped re-elect Trump in 2024 now has a crypto devotee sitting in the Oval Office. Beyond proclaiming that he intended to make America the “crypto capital of the planet,” President Trump has also issued his own cryptocurrency, $TRUMP. In May 2025, President Trump awarded those who bought the most of his meme coin with a dinner at one of his private clubs. And the very biggest buyers were awarded with a VIP White House tour. This behavior raises a host of ethical and legal issues, including possible violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses, if any of the buyers of the Trump coin used constitutionally prohibited funds from foreign or state governments.
According to CNN, the value of the Trump coin hit a high of $45.57 the day before his second inaugural, “giving it a $9 billion value.” As CNN added, these “gains padded Trump’s net worth, at least on paper, because 80% of the supply was held by Trump Organization-affiliates.” But nearly a year later, in December of 2025, the Trump coin had lost 88% of its value. Yet even at 12% of its top value, $TRUMP is still worth over $1 billion in real greenbacks, and that’s enough money to turn any politician’s head.
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This post is part of series on the law and political economy of cryptocurrency. Read the rest of the posts here.
