Trump-allied political action committee raises $7.5M in crypto
2024-10-17

A political action committee (PAC) supporting Donald Trump has raised $7.5 million in cryptocurrency to support his United States presidential election bid.
The “Trump 47” PAC raised millions in Bitcoin BTCUSD, Ether ETHUSD, XRP XRPUSD, and stablecoins Tether USDTUSD and USD Coin USDCUSD between July and September, according to an Oct. 15 filing with the Federal Election Commission.
Major donors over the past three months include crypto industry leaders and executives, with 18 donors giving over $5.5 million in BTC in total and seven donors contributing around $1.5 million in ETH. 
Notable contributions came from BTC media group CEO David Bailey, who gave $498,000, Ripple legal chief Stuart Alderoty donated $300,000 in XRP, and crypto exchange Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron the Winklevoss each gave $1.1 million.
Chase Herro, one of the co-founders of the Trump family’s new crypto project World Liberty Financial, also donated, as did the CEO of crypto custodian BitGo, Mike Belshe, who contributed almost $100,000 in BTC.
Other donors include Gary Cardone of Cardone Digital Ventures, who contributed over $840,000 in Bitcoin, Chainstone Labs CEO Bruce Fenton, and Kresus Labs founder Trevor Traina.
Trump 47 isn’t the only PAC attracting attention from the crypto industry. Bloomberg reported on Oct. 16 that the founders of crypto venture firm a16z, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, each donated $2.5 million to the pro-Trump super PAC “Right For America.”
Right For America has raised $38.6 million so far this election cycle, according to Open Secrets. 
Meanwhile, some crypto leaders have thrown support behind Trump’s rival Kamala Harris, including Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, who donated $1 million in XRP to the pro-Harris PAC “Future Forward.”
Ripple was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2020, with the legal battle has dragged on for the past four years. 
Nearly half of all the corporate money flowing into election campaigns has come from the crypto industry, according to an August report from the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen.
The report said the crypto industry has contributed about 13 times more to this election cycle compared to its contributions in the last presidential election.
One of the largest super PACs, the crypto sector’s Fairshake, has raised more than $200 million this election cycle, according to Open Secrets. 
Fairshake has used almost $7 million for media buys and production to support candidates, according to a September filing. It also spent more than $2 million opposing Democrat incumbents. 