The crypto industry's flagship super PAC, Fairshake, has announced the House candidates it will support in the midterms, and the list is notable for how little risk it takes. According to Molly White's newsletter Citation Needed, all 32 are incumbents and all but four sit in safe seats. That makes it easier to claim a high win rate and then argue it proves the existence of a crypto voter bloc, White writes, even as the PAC has abandoned some reliable allies in competitive races. Instead, it appears focused on rewarding high-ranking figures such as Financial Services Committee chair French Hill and digital assets subcommittee chair Bryan Steil.
The same newsletter details deepening ties between Tether and Bo Hines, the former executive director of Trump's crypto advisory council. While Hines helped negotiate the Genius Act stablecoin law, his family's consulting firm NXUM pitched Tether on a "strategic lobbying" and PR campaign that has paid NXUM at least $6.3 million, with payments beginning while Hines was still in the White House. Hines pushed legislators to double the grace period for crypto exchanges to stop offering noncompliant stablecoins, a change that primarily benefited Tether. Three weeks after the bill was signed, Hines left the administration and was later named CEO of Tether's new US arm. NXUM also helped launch the Fellowship PAC, funded almost entirely by Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm formerly run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — a relationship now under scrutiny by a Senate subcommittee.
The revolving door continues. Patrick Witt, who succeeded Hines as executive director of the crypto council, has left for an unnamed private-sector job, leaving the council without a director or deputy director. The Clarity Act, a crypto market structure bill Witt was negotiating, has stalled in the Senate. White concludes that crypto executives who have poured more than $250 million into super PAC election spending since 2024 may be wondering whether the administration got what it needed and is moving on. This account relies on a single source, so there are no competing claims to reconcile.