Coinbase, Circle, and other crypto companies are forming the Blockchain Association, the first lobbying group in DC representing the cryptocurrency industry
The price of bitcoin may be down, compared with last year's meteoric heights. But industry officials aren't waiting for the next spike …
Context & Ripple Effects
In September 2018, with bitcoin well off its prior-year peak, Coinbase and Circle chose to invest in Washington rather than wait out the bear market, forming the [[a:|Blockchain Association]] as the industry's first dedicated lobbying group. The move looks prescient against the coverage that followed: by 2021 the NYT was documenting a major uptick in crypto lobbying spend by Coinbase, Ripple, and trade groups like the Association itself.
That spending wave kept compounding — over a dozen new lobbyist disclosures after the infrastructure bill's tax amendment, executive donations becoming a key cash source for lawmakers ahead of a federal rulemaking push, and eventually Coinbase standing up its own grassroots arm, the Stand with Crypto Alliance, alongside the nine under-the-radar lobbying firms now working for Binance, Crypto.com, and others.
First-order effects
- Coinbase and Circle gain a single, coordinated voice in DC at a moment when falling prices make regulatory clarity, not market momentum, the industry's main growth constraint.
Second-order effects
- The trade-group template proves exportable: rivals and later entrants hire their own lobbyists and build parallel vehicles like Stand with Crypto, turning crypto policy influence into a crowded, competitive market rather than one association's franchise.
Third-order effects
- The pattern ends where the 2025 coverage does — firms like Circle seeking bank charters as an administration pushes crypto into mainstream finance — meaning the industry that once lobbied for permission now lobbies from inside the regulated system, with the legitimacy gap closing through institutional presence rather than price appreciation.
The trend: Crypto is migrating from an outsider industry buying access in Washington to an embedded financial-services lobby whose endgame is charters and seats at the rulemaking table.