Post by @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

Crypto and AI super PACs spent $250 million on the midterms. In the races where their money could actually make a difference, nearly two-thirds of it backed candidates who lost.

You wouldn’t know it from what the industries are saying. New issue: https://www.citationneeded.news/crypto-ai-lost-the-midterms/

#crypto #cryptocurrency #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #USpolitics #USpol #CitationNeededNewsletter

Citation Needed

How crypto and AI lost the midterms, and why they say they didn’t

Crypto and AI super PACs went undefeated in races they were always going to win. In competitive ones, most of their money backed losers.

#citationneedednewsletter #cryptocurrency #crypto #artificialintelligence #uspolitics #uspol #ai

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Molly White

@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 2 hr. ago

Fairshake is touting a 92% win rate. But this is only because it bet on 74 nearly guaranteed wins — out of the 18 competitive seats Fairshake spent in, its candidate won just 8.

About half of its $155 million in spending backed losers.

The biggest loss was crypto’s unsuccessful $64 million in spending to keep Sherrod Brown out of the Senate. Brown may now chair the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the CFTC: the regulator crypto has spent years trying to put in charge of itself.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpolitics #USpol #CitationNeededNewsletter

How FairShake's spending turned out: $25.1 million spent in primaries on bets that paid off there, on favorites in safe or likely seats (43 races); $508,000 spent on primary bets that paid off, in generals that haven't been called, on favorites in safe or likely seats (1 race); $29 million spent in primaries on bets that paid off there, in competitive contests or on underdogs (9 races); $27.9 million spent on primary bets that paid off, then paid off again in the general, in competitive contests or on underdogs (7 races); $10.4 million spent in general elections on bets that paid off, on favorites in safe or likely seats (31 races); $24 million spent on primary bets that paid off, then paid off again in the general, on favorites in safe or likely seats (40 races); $17.7 million spent in primaries on bets that failed there, in competitive contests or on underdogs (5 races); $592,000 spent on primary bets that paid off, then failed in the general, on favorites in safe or likely seats (2 races); $58.6 million spent in general elections on bets that failed, in competitive contests or on underdogs (3 races); $150,000 spent in general elections that haven't been called, on favorites in safe or likely seats (1 race); $13.5 million spent in general elections on bets that paid off, in competitive contests or on underdogs (1 race); $1.1 million spent on primary bets that paid off, then failed in the general, in competitive contests or on underdogs (2 races).

Molly White

@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 2 hr. ago

Maybe the crypto PACs will chalk up their losses to the Democratic wave. But they made little effort to hedge against it — 3/4 of crypto’s spending backed Republicans, and most Democratic spending was in primaries.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpolitics #USpol #CitationNeededNewsletter

Now in fairness, this was a Democratic wave year, and some of these candidates might have lost regardless. But the crypto industry made little effort to prepare for that possibility. In 2024, even as many in the industry were confident Trump would win and Republicans would perform well in congressional elections, Fairshake still spent heavily on Democrats, including more than $10 million each to help elect Elissa Slotkin in Michigan and Ruben Gallego in Arizona. This cycle, despite polls predicting varying degrees of a Democratic wave for months, crypto went the other way. Outside of primaries, crypto super PACs did almost no significant spending to help Democrats. And the industry added new, explicitly partisan PACs this cycle. The Winklevoss-funded Digital Freedom Fund pledged to back “pro-Trump, pro-crypto champions” and to “stop Democrats from sabotaging the President’s agenda”;8 the Cynthia Lummis-linked America First Digital network vowed to elect Republicans to give the industry a “trusted and effective voice”.9 And despite Fairshake’s continual insistence that it’s bipartisan, its spending told a different story. It might have helped if the PAC had opposed even a single Republican in a Senate race, an industry source told CoinDesk.10 Instead, crypto tied itself to the party that was about to lose, and is now hoping to convince everyone that it won.

Molly White

@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 2 hr. ago

OpenAI- and a16z-linked Leading the Future spent $8.2M defeating “AI safety” candidate Alex Bores in NY-12, only for him to lose to a candidate with a similar platform. Backlash from AI’s intervention in that race was likely why they backed off in the general election.

On the other side was the Anthropic-linked “AI safety” Public First PAC network, which claimed a “crushing blow” to the “anti-regulation” PACs. But of the $29.2 million they spent, only about $10.9 million ended up helping winning candidates (37%).

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #USpolitics #USpol #CitationNeededNewsletter

Molly White

@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io 2 hr. ago

Despite the crypto industry’s public claims of widespread public support, their admakers clearly understand that being “pro-crypto” is not a winning message. Out of the 57 ads I tracked from crypto super PACs, only 3 mentioned crypto (obliquely).

AI-focused super PACs were more willing to mention their industry, but not in a good way. Most mentions came from “AI safety” PACs warning about the harms of AI, or from Leading the Future bashing Alex Bores for his history in the tech sector.

https://influence.citationneeded.news/2026/analysis/ads/library

#crypto #cryptocurrency #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #USpolitics #USpol #CitationNeededNewsletter

Tech Influence Watch

Crypto and AI super PAC ad library | Tech Influence Watch

Searchable transcripts of ads run by crypto- and AI-focused super PACs, tagged by theme

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