How cryptocurrency lobbying evolved from startup employees educating local officials on basics of blockchain to well funded PACs for electing crypto champions
John Collins will not say who asked him about the Antichrist. — It was an elected official of one of these 50 states …
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2018 profile catches crypto's Washington operation at its amateur stage: startup employees like John Collins were still explaining blockchain basics to state legislators — one of whom apparently asked Collins about the Antichrist. The related coverage traces what happened next: after the tax amendment fight over the US infrastructure bill drove over a dozen new lobbyist-hiring disclosures in late 2021, and crypto exec donations became a key cash source for some lawmakers ahead of a federal rules push, the industry graduated to super PACs.
First-order effects
- Pro-crypto congressional candidates gain a dedicated funding arm: by December 2023 Coinbase, a16z, and the Winklevoss twins had put $78M into crypto super PACs in three months, giving endorsed candidates a spending edge in key 2024 races.
Second-order effects
- Lawmakers who once resisted crypto lobbying — as when Fidelity's Bitcoin-ETF push hit resistance on Capitol Hill in 2021 — now face constituents-of-a-sort whose PAC money can fund primary challengers, shifting the calculus on crypto rulemaking.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, crypto becomes the template for the single-issue corporate super PAC: Bloomberg's read of the 2024 cycle was that an industry with concentrated wealth and no legacy voter base is 'practically perfect' for an era of unlimited spending.
The trend: Industry lobbying is consolidating from educational outreach into election-scale super PAC spending, with crypto as the clearest test case of what unlimited corporate money can buy in Congress.