Crypto political spending hits record $646 million as industry pushes for durable rules

Corporate political donations hit a record $646 million over the 18 months through June, according to Public Citizen's analysis of FEC filings. Crypto political spending led every other corporate sector at $206 million, while crypto, AI, and online betting together accounted for $344 million, more than half the total.

The GENIUS Act already created a federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, the SEC is rewriting crypto rules under Chair Paul Atkins, and the CFTC is pushing to bring more digital asset trading onshore. The Senate also faces a Sept. 15 cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act, a procedural step requiring 60 votes to limit debate.

Three years ago, the industry's Washington agenda was simple: stop regulating through enforcement and say what rules apply. Founders interviewed for this piece describe a different ask now, one that treats today's wins as a starting point Congress needs to make permanent.

Crypto political spending seeks durable rules

Utkarsh Ahuja, founder of Moon Pursuit Capital, said the industry has moved past asking for rules.

He told CryptoSlate:

“Founders are building companies on five- and ten-year timelines, and investors are deploying capital on similar horizons.”

A regulatory framework that can swing with each new administration gets priced directly into where that capital goes. Serious long-term bets are hard to make when asset classification, agency jurisdiction, and compliance requirements could all move again in four years.

Ahuja framed the goal in terms of credibility:

“The US doesn't need to be the easiest jurisdiction for crypto, but it should aim to be the most credible and predictable.”

SEC Chair Paul Atkins said on Aug. 18 that legislation remains indispensable to creating rules “future-proofed” enough that a future regulator cannot simply undo the current SEC's work.

That an administration official and an industry investor are converging on the same point independently gives the durability argument real weight beyond standard lobbying language.

Earlier crypto agendaNew congressional agendaStop regulation by enforcementMake today’s rules durable through statuteDefine whether tokens are securities or commoditiesLock in SEC/CFTC jurisdiction before administrations changeGet a federal stablecoin frameworkKeep stablecoin rules open to new entrantsWin permission to operateGain access to banking, charters and payment railsProtect exchanges and issuersProtect noncustodial software and settlement infrastructureMake crypto payments usableUpdate tax rules for microtransactions and machine payments

The Sept. 15 vote shapes what comes next

The House passed the CLARITY Act 294-134 in July 2025. The bill would create a system letting the SEC and CFTC jointly regulate the offer and sale of digital commodities, resolving the jurisdictional fight that has defined crypto lobbying for years.

Ahuja, Ryan Kirkley of Global Settlement Network, and Parth Kapadia of OpenVPP all named finishing market structure as their priority, independently of each other.

Whether the Senate clears cloture on Sept. 15 will shape which fight the next Congress inherits.

If cloture clears and the bill later becomes law, market structure could stop being the answer to every question about crypto's agenda, freeing attention for banking access, tax rules, and noncustodial protections.

Fail it, and finishing market structure remains the industry's dominant fight straight through the midterms, with committee control and chamber leadership suddenly carrying much higher stakes for crypto than they did a year ago.

ScenarioWhat happens politicallyWhat crypto focuses on nextCLARITY clears cloture and advancesMarket structure looks more likely to be settled before the midtermsBanking access, payment rails, tax treatment, noncustodial protections and implementationCLARITY clears cloture but stalls laterThe industry gains momentum but not permanenceKeeping pressure on Senate leadership and preventing the bill from being rewrittenCLARITY fails clotureMarket structure remains unresolved heading into the electionSEC/CFTC jurisdiction, asset classification and committee-control fightsCLARITY fails after control of Congress shiftsNegotiations may reset under new leadershipRebuilding the coalition and defending earlier policy gains

Crypto wants infrastructure access

Kirkley wants federal regulatory sandboxes that let startups test settlement infrastructure under supervision “without needing a megabank's compliance budget on day one,” modernized bank charters, and direct access to payment rails.

He added that “ambiguity taxes every founder building here.”

That means crypto companies want the same infrastructure access banks already have, well beyond a regulator's acknowledgment that they can operate legally.

Kirkley also warned that stablecoin rules need to stay workable for new entrants, since GENIUS implementation could otherwise harden into an incumbent moat and close off the open market it was supposed to create.

Total stablecoin market capitalization sits near $303.7 billion, and 21 financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citi and Deutsche Bank, announced on Sept. 1 plans to launch a jointly owned dollar-pegged stablecoin by early 2027.

BIS chief Pablo Hernández de Cos has separately argued that stablecoins do not yet credibly function as a means of payment at scale, while presenting tokenized deposits as a more promising path. That view reminds us that Washington's stablecoin enthusiasm is not universally shared.

Congress still writes crypto tax law for people

Kapadia's example involves a homeowner's battery enrolled in a virtual power plant, automatically earning thousands of tiny crypto-denominated payments for exporting electricity or responding to grid conditions.

Cynthia Lummis's pending digital asset tax proposal includes a $300 de minimis exemption meant to spare consumers from tracking every small crypto transaction, but it excludes property held for income production.

Kapadia argued that the carve-out excludes households earning automated crypto income from physical infrastructure, since the enrolled battery counts as income-producing property.

His proposed fix is an aggregation rule treating a year of micro-settlements as a single basis event, though how any enrolled battery gets classified in practice still needs confirmation from tax counsel.

Kapadia also wants a federal path for noncustodial settlement platforms, arguing a system that orchestrates payments without ever holding customer funds should not need money-transmitter licenses in fifty states. Congress has already begun addressing this.

The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, introduced by Lummis and Wyden, would exempt developers and infrastructure providers without control over user funds from money-transmitter status.

CLARITY's Senate materials describe similar protections for software developers who never control customer assets. Kapadia's request builds on that foundation, aiming to make those protections durable enough to survive state-by-state licensing fights that recreate the same problem elsewhere.

His final ask involves tokenized assets tied to physical performance, like renewable energy certificates and verified megawatt-hour receipts, which he wants classified on the commodity side of the line.

Tokenized real-world assets have already more than tripled since the start of 2025, reaching nearly $39 billion as of Sept. 1.

Market structure, in other words, also touches receipts for electricity, grid capacity and other machine-measured outputs.

Policy areaIndustry askWhy it mattersBanking and payment railsModernized charters and direct access to payment infrastructurePrevents crypto firms from depending entirely on incumbent banksStablecoinsRules workable for startups, not only large banks and issuersKeeps GENIUS from becoming an incumbent moatFederal sandboxesSupervised testing for settlement and tokenized productsLets startups experiment without megabank-scale compliance costsCrypto taxesAggregation or de minimis treatment for machine-scale paymentsMakes thousands of tiny automated transactions economically usableNoncustodial settlementFederal protection for platforms that never control user fundsAvoids 50-state money-transmitter fights for software-based systemsTokenized physical assetsCommodity-side treatment for verified energy and performance receiptsExtends market structure beyond tokens, stocks and Treasuries

Whether crypto political spending delivers durable rules

One path has cloture clearing Sept. 15 and the bill later becoming law, giving the next Congress room to work through banking access, tax treatment and noncustodial protections beyond relitigating basic jurisdiction.

Under that path, institutional capital gains the predictability Ahuja describes, and the industry's political spending starts converting into legislation a future administration cannot casually unwind.

Another path has cloture failing, or CLARITY stalling short of full passage, leaving market structure as the industry's dominant fight into a midterm election that could hand committee gavels to different hands entirely.

In that scenario, Ahuja's durability problem stays unresolved, capital keeps discounting US crypto policy for its volatility, and the industry's record political spending buys attention without buying the permanence founders say they need.

Crypto's next fight is over how much of the financial system it gets permitted to help rebuild.