Crypto's $176M midterm bet hits the polls

Americans vote Tuesday in midterm elections that will decide who controls Congress — and, with it, the future of US crypto rules. Industry groups have pumped roughly $176 million into more than 100 races this cycle, per an Oct. 27 Reuters report. Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz rank among the biggest backers of the Fairshake political network.

Republicans walk in holding both chambers: 219 House seats and 53 in the Senate, according to the Blockchain Association's election dashboard. Every one of the 435 House seats and 35 Senate races is on the ballot, settling Congress for the last two years of President Donald Trump's second term. Prediction markets tracked by Kalshi favored Democrats to take both chambers at the time of publication.

Three Senate fights are drawing the crypto money. In Ohio, Republican Jon Husted faces Democrat Sherrod Brown, a longtime industry critic — groups have reportedly dropped more than $50 million trying to keep him out of a senior committee seat. Nebraska Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, a Senate Banking Committee member friendly to crypto legislation, has gotten nearly $11 million in Fairshake spending, per the Washington Examiner. And in Texas, Republican Ken Paxton battles Democrat James Talarico, with the Winklevoss-backed Digital Freedom Fund spending on Paxton's behalf.

The stalled CLARITY Act sits at the center of it all. The market-structure bill would split crypto oversight between the SEC and the CFTC and set rules for intermediaries, but the Senate fell short in a 49–50 procedural vote on Sept. 15 — well shy of the 60 needed. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner pointed to weak safeguards against Trump profiting from his administration's crypto policies, while Republican sponsors said their final draft carried substantial ethics concessions.

Insiders don't expect a quick fix no matter who wins. Christian Davies of Relm Insurance told Cointelegraph that a change in congressional control would likely reset the CLARITY Act's timetable. Global Settlement Network CEO Ryan Kirkley put it plainly: the bill was already struggling with Republicans in charge, so the problem runs deeper than the majority.

One thing the industry does have: the GENIUS Act, a federal stablecoin framework that became law in July 2025. Bitcoin's price history around past midterms is getting plenty of social media airtime, but analysts aren't buying the pattern. 0G Labs CEO Michael Heinrich cautioned there haven't been enough cycles to call it one, and said ETF flows, institutional portfolios and global liquidity now drive price far more than they used to. Kirkley added that capital, confidence and a risk-friendly macro backdrop matter more to Bitcoin than any single election result.