Crypto PAC’s $2m Michigan spend shows industry’s stake in US market-structure law
Ripple- and Coinbase-backed Fairshake affiliate doubles ad spending to back a pro-CLARITY Act incumbent ahead of Michigan's primary.
A political action committee bankrolled largely by Ripple Labs and Coinbase has more than doubled its spending in a Michigan congressional primary, underlining how directly the digital assets industry is now bidding to shape the make-up of the US legislature that will decide its regulatory fate.
Federal Election Commission filings reviewed as of Thursday show Protect Progress, an affiliate of the crypto-industry super PAC Fairshake, has committed more than $2 million combined to support Representative Shri Thanedar in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District and to oppose his Democratic primary rival, Donavan McKinney, according to Cointelegraph. The latest disclosures added $884,240 in pro-Thanedar advertising and more than $150,000 in anti-McKinney spending on top of what had already been reported a week earlier.
A voting record the industry wants protected
The financial backing is not incidental. Thanedar voted for the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin framework now in force, and for the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, the market-structure bill still moving through the Senate. He also cosponsored the Promoting Innovation in Blockchain Development Act, aimed at shielding software developers from liability for code they write.
For an industry that has spent years lobbying Washington for a durable statutory framework rather than piecemeal enforcement actions, incumbents with that voting record are treated as assets worth defending in a primary, even one nominally contested between members of the same party.
McKinney has cast the spending as retaliation for his own criticism of the sector’s ties to the White House. In a statement on 21 July, he said “the crypto lobby is paying my opponent back for helping Trump make over $1 billion since taking office” — a reference to President Trump’s disclosure that he earned more than $1.4 billion from crypto-related activities in 2025, including his Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin and his family’s World Liberty Financial venture. Cointelegraph said it had not received an immediate response from either campaign when contacted.
A war chest built for a multi-state campaign
Michigan is only one front. Fairshake, which spent more than $170 million shaping the 2024 US election cycle, reported holding a $193 million war chest as of January. Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in June that Fairshake and its affiliates accounted for over $82 million of the roughly $189 million crypto firms had spent across the 2026 cycle so far.
Filings show the pattern extending well beyond Michigan. Defend American Jobs, another Fairshake affiliate, has spent more than $65,000 backing a Republican candidate in Washington’s 4th Congressional District, where primaries fall on the same day as Michigan’s. In Alabama, where primaries are scheduled for 11 August, the same PAC has committed more than $511,000 to support Jerry Carl Jr., a former Republican representative who held the state’s 1st district from 2021 to 2025 and was reported to have a net worth of up to $15 million in 2023.
Why this matters beyond Washington
For European observers accustomed to a more centralised rulemaking process under MiCA, the scale of direct campaign financing by crypto firms is a reminder of how differently digital-asset policy is contested in the United States. Legislative outcomes on stablecoins and market structure are being fought seat by seat, with well-funded PACs able to swing individual primaries months before any floor vote.
With the CLARITY Act still before the Senate and its final ethics provisions reportedly under negotiation with the White House, the composition of the House delivering it to conference remains directly material to how — and how quickly — a US market-structure law is finalised, with consequences for exchanges, custodians and issuers operating on both sides of the Atlantic.
Read more: Senators offer states enforcement role in bid to save CLARITY Act ethics clause
