On the campaign trail, these
debates and the spending by deep-pocketed donors who have a vested interest in
how the federal government shapes cryptocurrency policy means the candidates
they back get extra scrutiny on their positions on crypto. Flynn and
Bankman-Fried have both had to bat
away rumors
and suspicions that the billionaire was only backing Flynn because he would
push for favorable crypto laws if elected to Congress. Bankman-Fried says his
motivation in backing Flynn, an otherwise unremarkable candidate, is based on
their shared
views on altruism.
Every time Bankman-Fried or another
billionaire who made his fortune in the still new and mostly unregulated
industry backs a candidate, the motivation comes up. “You just can’t help but
think, yeah, they’re weighing in to curry favor with members of Congress and to
influence the regulations that are being proposed right now,” Congresswoman Carolyn
Bourdeaux told NBC
News in a recent interview. Bourdeaux is facing Congresswoman Lucy McBath,
a fellow Democrat, in Tuesday’s primary for Georgia’s new 7th Congressional District. McBath has the benefit of Bankman-Fried’s super PAC,
which is spending $2 million in support of her candidacy.
It’s still early and the battle
lines are very much muddled, but it’s more than a little likely that many
progressives will see crypto donors as nefarious shills from the wrong part of
the Democratic Party. For example, earlier in the cycle in one of the most
heated congressional primaries on the Democratic side to date, Bankman-Fried,
through the Protect Our Future super PAC he bankrolls, poured $1 million into
backing Shontel Brown, roughly the establishment-backed candidate, over former state
Senator Ohio Nina Turner, a longtime ally of Senator Bernie Sanders. In that race,
Bankman-Fried’s preferred candidate got
the nomination. To be fair, Brown was also the Cuyahoga County Democratic
chairwoman, and thus had a lot of local support.
