The cryptocurrency company Ripple announced a $25 million donation to super PAC Fairshake on Wednesday as part of an industry-wide effort to promote pro-crypto policies and politicians at a crucial time.
Last December, Ripple invested $20 million in Fairshake, which has already spent $11.3 million on federal elections. The wave of donations marks a significant escalation in Ripple’s political involvement. Ripple donated just $500,000 during the 2022 election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) data.
“Ripple will not – and the crypto industry should not – stand by while unelected regulators actively seek to impede the innovation and economic growth that millions of Americans rely on,” said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
Fairshake reported more than US$52.2 million cash available on April 30th, a considerable war chest heading into the 2024 elections.
More than $10 million of the super PAC’s spending to date has gone toward opposing a Senate bid by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.). Porter, who lost his Democratic primary bid for Senate in March, is “strongly against encryption” according to Stand With Crypto, a 501(c)4 nonprofit that another crypto giant, Coinbase, helped launch last summer.
Coinbase is another major donor to Fairshake along with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, asset manager ARK Invest and crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm Operations. The crypto community has sparred publicly with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in recent years, suing Ripple and Coinbase for alleged violations of federal securities law.
But the House voted last week to pass the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century (FIT 21) Act, a sweeping crypto regulation that would categorize most digital assets as a “commodity” regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). ). Only specific digital assets would be regulated as “securities” by the SEC under the bill, which has not yet passed the upper house.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler opposition the bill, saying it would “create new regulatory loopholes and undermine decades of precedent.”
“The crypto industry’s history of failures, frauds and bankruptcies is not because we have no rules or because the rules are not clear,” the SEC chairman said before the House vote. “It’s because many participants in the crypto industry don’t follow the rules.”
Perhaps one of the biggest scandals to plague the industry was the downfall of disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, who became the public face of crypto in politics ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. more than US$40.7 million to groups that primarily support Democratic candidates, making him the seventh-largest donor this cycle, according to the money-in-politics research group OpenSecrets, although he has since admitted to funneling “shady” contributions to Republican-supporting groups that do not. are included in this total.
The crypto industry quickly distanced itself from Bankman-Fried after its FTX exchange platform collapsed days after the midterm elections. He has since been sentenced to 25 years in prison on federal fraud and conspiracy charges related to his role in the collapse.
The broader crypto industry has also stepped up its political involvement, spending millions on lobbying bills, including FIT21, in addition to its political contributions. Garlinghouse said the “crypto industry intends to continue investing heavily in this effort until we see significant change.”
Ripple called the 2024 elections “the most important in the history of crypto.”
“We must elect leaders who understand this potential and support policies that protect consumers and markets in fair and innovative ways,” Ripple said in a statement.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
