Why crypto’s Fairshake super PAC has raised 20% less money than people think

For months, crypto players have flexed their muscle in the US election by raising huge sums for pro-industry candidates.

Numerous articles have reported how Fairshake, a crypto super PAC, has set the pace by amassing a war chest exceeding $200 million.

But that figure isn’t accurate, according to an analysis by DL News.

The super PAC has actually raised about $162 million.

Big spenders

To be sure, the crypto elite are big spenders in the 2024 US elections.

Some individuals, like Kraken’s co-founder Jesse Pollak, donate directly to presidential campaigns.

But many others have sent money to Fairshake, a political action committee that can indirectly spend unlimited funds on political candidates.

Fairshake then doles out money to support congressional candidates running for election.

This includes $10 million spent on attack ads against Representative Katie Porter, an anti-crypto Democrat running for reelection in California.

Big money is at play, but reports differ on how much.

Molly White, a crypto researcher who built her own platform that tracks crypto political donations, reports that the PAC has raised only about $162 million.

Yet OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that collects data from the Federal Election Commission, says that Fairshake has raised more than $200 million.

Double counts

The Federal Election Commission does report that Fairshake has secured close to $203 million in receipts, or what the FEC defines as anything with monetary value.

But receipts don’t directly translate to contributions.

When Silicon Valley venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each gave $2.5 million to Fairshake in October, the FEC recorded both their donations as well as a $5 million donation from Andreessen Horowitz, their VC firm.

“When people just look at the ‘receipts’ they get the wrong number,” White told DL News.

While the FEC’s online database recorded a $10 million contribution to receipts, the actual form Fairshake submitted said the total contribution was only $5 million.

Refunds, crypto transactions

Moreover, receipts also include refunds the political organisation has received and other accounting quirks.

The FEC says that Fairshake has gotten more than $630,000 from an entity called Targeted Platform Media, but metadata for those transactions categorise them as refunds for “media buys.”

And multiple companies, including Ark Invest, have donated crypto to Fairshake.

‘Our profile pages pull directly from the FEC database, which is why we also show this inflated amount.’

Brendan Glavin, OpenSecrets

FEC’s online database adds both the initial crypto donation and the value of its conversion to cash in its total receipts — another double count.

“It does appear that the way the FEC requires these crypto contributions to be reported results in duplicate entries,” Brendan Glavin, the deputy research director of OpenSecrets, told DL News. “And as such, the summary total on the FEC report shows inflated receipts and disbursements.”

Crypto bigwigs donate $162 million

When DL News subtracted double counts and receipts that weren’t actual contributions, Fairshake received $40 million less in donations than what OpenSecrets reports.

“Our profile pages pull directly from the FEC database, which is why we also show this inflated amount,” Glavin said.

That translates to almost $162 million in funds raised through June, the latest month for which the FEC has data.

And almost 84% of the contributions come from employees or founders from just three companies: Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Other prominent donors are Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the co-founders of crypto exchange and custodian Gemini; Circle, the stablecoin titan; and Kraken, the crypto exchange.

Deep-pocketed venture capitalists put up money, too, including Paradigm’s Matt Huang and Fred Ehrsam and Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson.

In total, there are only 58 contributors to Fairshake that donated more than $200 as of June, per DL News’ analysis.

Ben Weiss is a Dubai Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at bweiss@dlnews.com.