Molly White's Citation Needed - The Cryptocurrency Industry's Unprecedented Election Spending

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

The cryptocurrency industry spent almost $200 million to influence the outcomes of the 2024 United States elections. This unprecedented degree of corporate spending from a relatively small industry had a major effect — but probably not in the way you think.Let's talk about where the money came from, where it went, what the cryptocurrency industry's goals are in politics, and what to do now.This is an audio version of my original video.

I'm Molly White, and you're listening to the audio feed for the Citation Needed Newsletter. You can see the text version of the newsletter online at citation needed.news. The cryptocurrency industry's unprecedented election spending. Let's talk about where the money came from, where it went, the cryptocurrency industry's political goals, and what's next. This issue was originally published on November 22, 2024. I recorded a video to try to try to do that. to condense roughly a year's worth of my cryptocurrency industry election coverage into a bit over 30 minutes. For those who've followed my writing for a while, this may be more of a summary of things I've already said,

but I hope it will still be useful to share with others who are perhaps a little bit less up to speed. I'm releasing the audio of the video on this podcast feed for the audio listeners of the newsletter. While there are some visuals throughout the video, I think it will be pretty comprehensive. for people who are just listening to the audio. Without further ado, here it is. The cryptocurrency industry spent almost $200 million on the 24 elections. I wanted to do just a quick video to chat a little bit about what happened, where that money came from, where it went,

and what the cryptocurrency industry is trying to achieve by pouring this much money into politics. So I've been following this spending for the better part of the year. I noticed that they had really ramped it up earlier this year during the primary cycle, but throughout the elections, they were incredibly involved, both in donating money, but also in very public influence campaigns to try to convince both the general public and the potential electorate that cryptocurrency was something they needed to pay attention to. This was, I think, kind of confusing to some people who thought that crypto was over, that, you know, the crypto industry had collapsed in 2022 with FTX, and now suddenly here they are

pouring more money than practically any other industry into elections. So let's talk a little bit about what happened. The cryptocurrency industry was heavily involved, mostly in congressional races, where they spent money on 68 different races. Fifty-eight of those races where they spent money went how they wanted them to go, meaning that the candidate that they supported was a elected or the candidate they opposed was defeated. And I really can't overstate the magnitude of the spending, which totally eclipsed any other industry or issue-focused super PACs. Around half of all corporate spending in this election cycle came from the cryptocurrency industry, which is unreal. The industry's top super PAC raised the fifth most money out of all super PACs, like all of them,

behind three super PACs that are dedicated to supporting either Democratic or Republican Senate candidates, and of course behind Donald Trump's super PAC, which was in first place as far as the amount of money that they raised. And like I said, this degree of spending really took a lot of people by surprise, I think, because the washout of 2022 made a lot of people think that crypto was over. I've been following it very closely all year, but I noticed there was very little media attention being given to the crypto industry spending, until Election Day or so. And now there's sort of a lot of after the fact coverage going, what just happens? How did we get here? The coverage that there was before Election Day really bought into a lot of the industry's talking points. And there was this, like I said, strong

influence campaign from the cryptocurrency industry to seed a narrative that would be favorable to them in the elections. This is something we're really going to need to keep paying attention to going forward and so I want to bring you up to speed. In this video, I'm going to talk about the industry spending and the strategies behind that spending, the narratives that came out of the industry, the policies that the industry is hoping to advance, and then, of course, what do we do next? What happens next? So as far as strategies, we need to talk about super PACs for a second. Super PACs are a type of political committee that were made possible thanks to the Supreme Court in 2010. There was a Supreme Court case called Citizens United in 2010, which has allowed individuals and corporations to make unlimited contributions to super PACs, which are a type of political action committee that does something called independent and expenditures, where they support a given candidate or an issue, but they don't coordinate directly with those candidates, at least in theory.

This decision enabled an absolute explosion of corporate spending. It's been major since 2010, but it seems to only be getting more and more extreme every election cycle. And this is something we should really worry about from any industry, not just the cryptocurrency industry. I obviously focus a lot on the cryptocurrency industry. I have a lot of complaints about the cryptocurrency industry. But any corporation, any industry, anywhere where billionaires are able to make unlimited political expenditures, can really change the political landscape. When billionaires and corporations are able to do this type of spending,

it becomes very easy for them to elevate their own interests over those of normal citizens. And we see the type of things that happen here, where state-level representatives who are meant to act on behalf of their constituents are now paying more attention to often out-of-state billioners who could care less about the types of issues that are important to individuals in those states, but instead are just trying to bolster their bottom lines and advance policies that will be favorable to them, regardless of how it impacts everyone else. The cryptocurrency industry took full advantage of Super PACs in 2024 and created several of their own.

The largest one was called Fair Shake, but there were a couple of others. The two other big ones were called Defend American Jobs, which ostensibly supported conservative pro-crypto candidates. And then there was Protect Progress, which was supposed to be the progressive crypto super PAC. In reality, these were sort of three heads of the same beast. They were all run by the same people. They shared a spokesperson. And the majority of the funding for both defend American jobs and protect progress came

directly from Fairshake. The remainder of the funding that was given directly to those two committees was coming from the same individuals and corporations that were funding fair shake. There was this sort of attempt to make it appear as though there were separate interests and divide and conquer as far as more right-leaning candidates were supported by different American jobs. More left-leaning candidates were supported by Protect Progress, but it was all the same people. Altogether, the single-issue crypto super PACs raised $197 million just during this cycle, and 162 million of that went to Fairshake, which, as I said, then funneled some of it to defend American jobs and protect progress.

As far as where the money was coming from, when it came into Fairshake, $46.5 million of it came from Coinbase, $45 million of it came from Ripple Labs, $44 million of it came from the founders of Andresen Horowitz, Mark Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz. After that, $15 million came from Jump Crypto. $5 million came from the Winklevoss twins who run the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, but are also broadly more involved as investors and certainly are a spokespeople of the cryptocurrency industry. Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures contributed around $1 million. The Krakken cryptocurrency exchange contributed $1 million,

and the Circle cryptocurrency company that creates the USDC stable coin contributed $1 million. One thing I want to briefly touch on, I will get more into what the policies are that these groups were trying to advance. But one thing that I think is really important to note when I'm listing these companies is how many of these companies have open litigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission. So like I said, I'll go into more detail later. But one of the biggest things that the crypto super PACs are trying to achieve is to reduce the scrutiny from the security and exchange commission, preferably to bring the crypto industry out from under their purview entirely, but otherwise to install a crypto-friendly head of the SEC, which then they, I think, would hope,

would drop some of these cases against these cryptocurrency firms and enable them to do the types of offerings and activities that they've been wanting to do for years, but have been either avoiding because of the fear that the SEC would crack down on them or have been forced to stop by the SEC. So just to recap some of those companies, Coinbase, the top donor, has open SEC cases against them. Ripple Labs has been fighting the SEC since 2020. Andresen Horowitz has received letters from the SEC about some of their investments in crypto companies like Uniswap. Jump Crypto has been named in various SEC investigations against other companies and had to answer some rather tough questions.

And there have been rumors about various regulatory agencies taking a look at what they've been doing. Gemini, run by the Winklevoss Twins, had an SEC case against them. Same thing with Cracken. They settled with the SEC for multiple millions of dollars. So I really cannot overstate how clear the goals are of these companies, where they are really just trying to buy their way out of these lawsuits and enter into a world where their skirting of securities regulations, the types of consumer protections that the SEC is responsible for overseeing becomes an accepted part of law,

where they don't have to worry about that type of oversight because they have forced their way out of the Securities and Exchange Commission's remit or have installed people who are very friendly to the cryptocurrency industry who have no interest in enforcing regulations. against them. So besides the spending, these companies and other companies in the cryptocurrency industry were also engaged in this massive PR campaign throughout the election cycle. And it was targeted at everyday people and certainly at the media, but I think it was really aimed at political candidates who were, of course, looking to court more potential voters. The cryptocurrency industry was really focused on convincing people that there existed this group of

single-issue voters who were voting specifically because of their beliefs about cryptocurrency, potentially even at the expense of, you know, crossing party lines to vote for a candidate they might not otherwise support or overlooking other issues where they disagree. The industry did this through a number of routes, but one of the big ones was commissioning really shady polls with incredibly suspect methodology to try to, again, support the claim that there were all these voters out there who were voting based on their beliefs on cryptocurrency. And then these companies who commissioned the polls issued these summaries and these press releases of explaining the results of the polls, claiming that these voters all exist,

even when their own poll data contradicted it. So there was a poll early this year from the Digital Currency Group that had a list of key findings that said that among a size of, contingent of voters, crypto attracts a level of interest that translates into pro-crypto sentiments across the board. And they also said that crypto, as a voting issue, could present a key opportunity for political candidates. Despite those very bold claims, their actual data showed that 80% of respondents disagreed with a statement that crypto was a major issue they were considering during the next election, and 50% disagreed strongly. Besides that,

But 69% of people surveyed had either very or somewhat negative opinions towards crypto. So even if it was true that there were all of these people who were voting based on their cryptocurrency beliefs, around 70% of them would supposedly be voting based on negative opinions towards crypto. The idea that a candidate could win over actual people, real voters, by supporting the cryptocurrency industry, was really not supported even by their own data. There was a man named Chris Lahane, who is a strategist who previously led policy for Airbnb, which, as many people know, went on a very aggressive campaign of challenging policies across

the United States to implement Airbnb. Lahane worked very closely with Coinbase and with the Fair Shake Super Pack throughout this election cycle. And according to a really great piece in The New Yorker, Lahane told the Coinbase team that we need to demonstrate there's a crypto voter. When a Coinbase staff member pointed out that they didn't know if there was a crypto voter and described low crypto ownership and generally low prioritization of crypto issues when it came to polls asking about what people were worried about as far as election issues, Lahane just responded, then we're going to make one.

The goal here was very clear. It didn't matter if there was actually a crypto voter, but by creating this story about this block of single-issue crypto voters, they could convince candidates that they needed to become friendly to the crypto industry and to support policies that the industry supported in order to win their elections. And they were, again, very directly targeting the electoral candidates with this story. Beyond that, Coinbase has an advocacy group called Stand With Crypto, and they established this sort of report card style ranking of politicians, both incumbents that were looking for

re-election and also potential candidates. And they rated them from strongly supportive to strongly against cryptocurrency. And this was ostensibly based on their past votes on crypto-related bills, public statements and tweets and things like that, as well as questionnaires that the cryptocurrency industry put out. But the methodology behind these rankings was again very suspect, and the site would really regularly assign different scores to candidates that had very similar views on cryptocurrency policy. But they made candidates worry that if they had a poor ranking on this site, they needed to do something to change that, to increase their rankings and become more palatable to this group of voters who supposedly existed.

Once they'd seeded that narrative, the next strategy was to make this show of force that would send a signal to the candidates that either they get on board or will ruin you. They did this by picking some races that they knew were going to attract widespread attention, and then they began spending to oppose the candidates that they labeled anti-crypto. And as I said, this ranking and this labeling was pretty unusual. It was not particularly based in reality. The first and definitely most notable target of the spending was Katie Porter, a California representative who had earned a reputation in Congress for challenging corporate interests. When she first found herself in the industry's crosshairs, her only real anti-crypto action had been to sign on to a letter

authored by Elizabeth Warren and sent to Texas's Energy Council, seeking information about the energy usage of Texan crypto mining operations and expressing general concern about potential climate impact and electricity price hikes for consumers in that area who were sharing a grid with these crypto mining operations. And certainly Elizabeth Warren is one of the biggest opponents of cryptocurrency on Capitol Hill, but simply by signing onto this letter, Porter earned this designation of a strongly anti-crypto candidate. The industry's choice of Porter as a target was really not because they viewed her as one of their biggest threats. Elizabeth Warren herself was up for re-election, but the cryptocurrency industry mostly ignored her throughout the election cycle because the goal was really not to oust their strongest opponents or install their strongest defenders, but to make a show of force to cede this narrative that the cryptocurrency industry was incredibly powerful and that candidates needed to fall in line. So again, they chose Katie Porter because it was a high-profile race.

It was scheduled pretty early in the primary season compared to some other states. And also, polls were already showing that she had a pretty tough battle ahead for her. Besides that, they also knew that if Katie Porter lost her election, her Democratic opponent, Adam Schiff, was pretty likely to win. And so Fairshake wouldn't necessarily take the blame for flipping a Senate seat red in California. The cryptocurrency spending mostly went towards advertisements, which they ran against Porter. And these advertisements were incredibly revealing. Despite all of the claims the industry had been making about these single-issue crypto voters, it was clear that they didn't actually believe what they were saying,

because none of the ads mentioned cryptocurrency at all. Katie Porter plays us for fools, lecturing California on her values. She claims not to take corporate pack money. No. Instead, Katie Porter takes her campaign cash directly from Big Pharma, Big Oil, and the big bank executives. More than $100,000. That's not shaking up the Senate. It's deceitful politics as usual. And we won't be fooled. Fair Shake is responsible for the content of this ad. And this was a trend that continued across other races throughout the election cycle, where cryptocurrency super PAC advertisements were focused. on issues they thought would actually win over the voters rather than cryptocurrency,

which voters, broadly speaking, don't care about. And these issues that they focused on were often ones that the crypto industry and the executives controlling these super PACs didn't really care about. For example, in Arizona, there was a crypto super PAC ad that talked up a candidate who was a daughter of immigrants and who had pledged to protect reproductive rights, even as the industry was simultaneously supporting a, far-right Republican only 30 miles north, who was running on an explicitly anti-immigrant anti-abortion platform. The industry ultimately spent $10 million to oppose Porter, and she did, in fact, lose her

primary race. It's pretty likely she would have lost anyway, even without the $10 million in opposition spending, which came exclusively from the cryptocurrency industry, but Fairshake still claimed full credit for her loss. And the message was sent, if you were. you oppose us, you'll suffer the consequences. The super PACs really underscored this point by repeating the strategy in two other high-profile primaries. They spent almost $2.1 million to house Jamal Bowman in New York's District 16, and they spent another $1.4 million against Cory Bush in Missouri's District 1. Both of those candidates were already, again, facing tough races, and they were up against an enormous amount of opposition spending in those particular cases,

largely from A-PAC. Neither of those two candidates had been particularly outspoken against crypto. And just like Porter, they lost their races, and the cryptocurrency super PACs declared victory. After these losses, and as the election season continued, we began to see a lot more politicians and candidates paying attention to crypto. Some past skeptics really soften their stances towards the industry, and others really allied themselves completely.

There was a bill called Fit 21 that was championed by the cryptocurrency industry because it would potentially defang the SEC and reduce the degree to which they could oversee the industry. That received substantially more support from Democrats than previous attempts at crypto-friendly legislation, which were largely split across party lines. Candidates who'd really not shown any interest in cryptocurrency suddenly began adding statements to their websites about the potential for, for innovation in digital assets and blockchains. And Donald Trump himself reversed his previous position on crypto, which was incredibly critical. A Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam. I was surprised, you know, with us it was at six. You don't like it because it's another currency competing against the dollar.

Essentially it's a currency competing against the dollar. I want the dollar to be the currency of the world. That's what I've always said. headlined the Bitcoin 2024 conference where he made bold promises to an absolutely adoring audience. A group of Democrats at the same time wrote a letter to the DNC, urging them to, quote, take a forward-looking approach to the industry. And they wrote that the sector holds immense potential for American innovation, economic growth, and financial inclusion, continuing on to condemn the regulatory agency's efforts to enforce regulations against an

industry that had really just decided they were exempt. Once we entered the general elections, the super PACs changed their approach a little bit, focusing more on supporting allies than opposing those who were viewed as hostile to the industry. Ultimately, as I mentioned, the Super PACs spent in 68 races, and they have been overjoyed to announce that 58 of the 68 races went their way. Two races where the industry spent money still have not been called, but as of recording, it doesn't look like either of them is going to go the way the industry wanted. So I think 58 is probably going to be the final number, but could be up to 60.

Industry players have bragged that crypto's big bet paid off and that the crypto army is striking. The cryptocurrency industry has been celebrating this victory and claiming that that's proof of these crypto voters that they've been talking about for months, that it shows that Americans love cryptocurrency and are fed up with this apparently overzealous enforcement regime that is aiming at killing the industry, according to them. But it's really important to note that the industry's approach throughout the election was really to support the winners. Betting on candidates they thought were going to win anyway, and then later declaring complete victory, claiming responsibility for the outcomes of the elections that went the way that they wanted.

And when you look at the list of candidates that they supported, this is pretty clear. Coinbase's Stand with Crypto Advocacy Group endorsed a group of 39 political candidates. 27 of them, or more than two-thirds, had a greater than 90% chance of winning their races, according to a model from the Hill. 32 of those 39 had a 75% chance or more of winning. So again, they were backing a group of people who were broadly, likely to win their elections no matter what. When it came to election night, the strategy became even more clear. Several of these candidates who were supported by the cryptocurrency industry and backed by

these super PACs were declared to have won their races within minutes of polls closing. This strategy was really because the election cycle this year was really the first campaign in what is likely to be a very long effort to buy crypto-friendly legislators, install crypto-friendly regulators and write crypto-friendly policies, and to carve out loopholes in the regulations that the industry has already been largely ignoring. Two of Fairshake's major donors have already contributed a combined nearly $50 million more to Fairshake, which they say is intended for spending on the midterm elections, but which also really adds weight to these threats,

that if you oppose the cryptocurrency industry, you're going to face, substantial political consequences and opposition spending down the line. So the question now really is, what is it that the cryptocurrency industry wants? What is so important to them that they spent $200 million on an election? And again, I really cannot overstate how much money that is. Certainly there are other industries that spend heavily on elections, you know, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, the sort of, you know, major players. cryptocurrency is a very, very small industry compared to any of these, and yet they're spending

absolutely dwarfed other industries. It was unbelievable how much money they put into this. So what is it that they wanted? As I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest goals is reducing the amount of oversight from the securities and exchange commission over the cryptocurrency industry. So the SEC is broadly speaking responsible for overseeing a of financial product called securities. And these are things like stocks. Companies that issue securities or platforms for trading securities have to register with the SEC.

They have to submit to oversight from the agency. And the agency is broadly speaking responsible for maintaining market integrity, maintaining a degree of trust in the markets, and for protecting consumers by eliminating fraud and things like that. They also require a degree of transparency and disclosures from companies so that investors can make informed decisions about where they're spending their money. And although the SEC has maintained

the position that the majority of cryptocurrencies fall under their purview, the cryptocurrency industry just disagrees. They maintain that it's just not fair for them to have to follow the very same laws that apply to a broad range of financial assets. And they say that cryptocurrency is so unique and so special that they should have their own bespoke set of rules, of course, written by the industry. Because the practice of just ignoring laws they don't like or they don't feel like following is so common within the cryptocurrency industry, as I mentioned earlier, there are open SEC actions against many of the biggest spenders in this election cycle. Two of the biggest spenders, Coinbase and Ripple, are locked in brutal,

litigation with the SEC and have been for years. Cracken has settled lawsuits from the SEC with multi-million dollar fines. So the cryptocurrency industry would love to see the open litigation just go away. And they've generally pushed for legislation that would take the industry out of the purview of the SEC, and instead put them under the oversight of the CFTC, which is the regulator responsible for commodities. And this is an agency that although it has pursued some enforcement actions against crypto companies, including Coinbase, Gemini, and Cracken, it is pursued far fewer than the SEC, and it has far fewer resources to pursue an aggressive strategy when it comes to the industry. It also has a much weaker consumer protection mandate

compared to the SEC. Putting aside whether or not the industry is able to get out from under the crosshairs of the SEC, they also are hoping to change the makeup of the SEC to make it much friendlier to them. They have massive lists of complaints against the current SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, who they believe has been far too aggressive in pursuing enforcement actions against the cryptocurrency industry and has been too broad in his definition that cryptocurrencies fall under securities regulations. And so they're hoping to oust him and install a chairman at the SEC that is friendly to the cryptocurrency industry. After the election, executives of cryptocurrency companies have been tripping over themselves to name their favorites to potentially be nominated for the SEC

chairman role. And although the SEC, again, is tasked with overseeing an incredibly wide range of financial products, including the entire United States stock market, this very small portion of the United States financial system, one that's really on the fringes of it, is looking to install people who would oversee this entire agency who are focused on their one specific industry and who are looking to pursue a very lenient regulatory approach when it comes to the cryptocurrency industry. And I want to be really clear here. The cryptocurrency industry loves to repeat a talking point that they want to be regulated, but that they want clear common sense regulation, that they want to be treated like any other financial product or financial company

and not singled out for attack from the SEC. But I think when you actually look at their actions rather than their PR statements, it reveals their true goals. If they really wanted to follow the same rules as everyone else, they would agree to be regulated by the securities agency, just like everybody else. Instead, they have literally petitioned the agency to write special rules for them, and when the agency declined to do so, they have been suing them in court, where courts have largely said, you're really not that special, you just need to follow the same rules as everybody else.

When clear common sense regulations have actually been proposed in Congress, the industry has come out swinging against them. They've condemned those laws as making it impossible for the cryptocurrency industry to continue to operate in the United States, which I think is kind of telling on themselves a little bit, that the businesses rely on avoiding laws and not being regulated, and that actually having to follow the same rules as everybody else would completely destroy their business. model. Besides the question of which agencies will oversee the cryptocurrency industry and who is in charge of those agencies, the cryptocurrency industry also has some other goals. They are really hoping to see cryptocurrency assets become more broadly intertwined into the financial system, but also into the banking systems. They've been running up against rules that aim to

separate out the roles that any particular financial institution can play, and they've also been running up against limits on banks as far as what risky activities they're allowed to engage in. If we go back to 2022 and look at the sudden and massive collapse of not only the FTX cryptocurrency company, but a whole slew of other ones and, of course, the crash in cryptocurrency prices, there was one saving grace, which is that people who did not hold cryptocurrencies were pretty much completely insulated from that collapse. And this is really different. from what happened in 2008, where even if you weren't doing anything with mortgage-backed securities, you still probably felt massive economic impact because the crisis spread throughout the economy,

both nationally and globally, and governments were forced to bail out financial institutions that had become too big to fail. The cryptocurrency industry likes to claim that all of the bad actors in the crypto space were wiped out in 2022 with the collapse of FTX, with Sam Bankman-Fried, spending 25 years in prison, and that now everything's above board. But nothing has changed since 2022 that would prevent these same catastrophes from happening again. Regulations were not instituted to protect customers from predatory activities like what was happening at FTX. And in fact, the cryptocurrency is now arguing that they actually need fewer regulations. If the cryptocurrency,

industry gets their way, they would like to see themselves grow so large and so enmeshed with the rest of finance that the next time crypto falls apart, and it does on a pretty regular basis, they would get the same types of bailouts and government protection as we saw in 2008, even at the expense of everyday people who are wise enough to stay far away. They also know that the more they are able to worm their way into traditional finance, the more legitimate their asset class will seem. And we've already seen this with the approval of Bitcoin ETPs, which are now being offered by financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity.

And this has been kind of ironic to watch because much of the original crypto ideology was about circumventing banks, avoiding the types of middlemen, as you see in the traditional financial system and avoiding the type of control and scrutiny that you see from the government and from traditional financial institutions. But now the cryptocurrency industry has been celebrating that BlackRock is offering a Bitcoin ETF. That's because the crypto industry has been really focused on getting crypto products and sort of crypto-adjacent products like the ETPs accepted as a part of retirement portfolios and pension funds, despite warnings from, you know, the Department of Labor that fiduciaries must exercise extreme care when it comes to crypto because

of the massive risk. The type of risk that most people don't want to take on when it comes to the question of whether they'll be able to live out their later years comfortably or in poverty because FTX exploded. So the question now is what's going to happen next? I really don't want to sugarcoat it. I think we're going to be in for a pretty bumpy ride with this administration over the next couple of years. And not just to do with cryptocurrency, but very broadly speaking, people are going to have to decide where to spend their energy and what causes they need to focus on the most. And if that's cryptocurrency, great. For some people, they're just not going to have the energy to pay attention to it. I understand that. But if you are focused on the cryptocurrency industry and the types of changes that

industry is hoping to pass through this next administration, we're really going to have to pay attention into attempts both by that industry, but also from the tech industry very broadly, to pair back consumer protections and to further enable giant corporations to bleed dry everyday people who are often in very precarious financial situations and who are sometimes convinced that risky financial products like cryptocurrency are the only way for them to get ahead. When bills are floated to write loopholes for the cryptocurrency industry to continue to act without any type of oversight and to enable more disasters like the ones we saw ruin people only a few years ago with FTX, we really need to pressure our representatives to fight for us and not for the imaginary crypto voter

and certainly not for their billionaire backers. Speaking more generally, we really need to fight back against the influence of money in politics. Legislators could introduce laws to overturn the results of Citizens United and to eliminate the type of unlimited corporate and billionaire spending that is, frankly, rotting away democracy. And they would have really significant support if they did so. I'm proud to say that the state where I grew up, Maine, just passed a ballot initiative that would limit big money in politics. And it passed with overwhelming support. 75% of voters supported it. These types of initiatives are overwhelmingly popular with voters because people understand that they need proper representation,

and they don't want lawmakers being paid to ignore their issues, and instead pay attention to what corporations and billionaire executives want. So this is a great way that we could pressure our lawmakers to do the right thing. As far as keeping abreast of what happens next, I would, of course, encourage you to follow my work. I've been following the cryptocurrency industry for years now, even when people said that crypto had gone away and I should just join everybody else in pivoting to cover AI. I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not about to stop now. You can support my work by subscribing to my newsletter at citationneeded.news, which is free or pay what you want.

It is how I keep doing this type of work, creating these types of videos, and keeping people up to speed on what the crypto industry is up to. Thanks for watching, and feel free to. to leave a comment if you have any questions or if you think there's anything that I still need to cover. Thanks for listening to this issue of the citation needed newsletter. To learn how to support my work, visit mollywhite.net slash support. If you'd like to read the text versions of these episodes, sign up to receive the newsletter in your email, or support my work on a recurring basis. Go to citation needed.com. News.