{"id":22694,"date":"2025-04-03T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/quiet-ties-how-crypto-lobbyists-gained-entry-to-the-white-house\/"},"modified":"2025-04-03T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T12:00:00","slug":"quiet-ties-how-crypto-lobbyists-gained-entry-to-the-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/quiet-ties-how-crypto-lobbyists-gained-entry-to-the-white-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Quiet ties: how crypto lobbyists gained entry to the White House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After the <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/ftx-to-commence-compensation-payments-exceeding-50000\">FTX collapse<\/a>, many American crypto projects lost faith in the Democratic Party and redirected money and effort into lobbying their interests around Donald Trump. The market appears to be entering a new era, as many swap earlier ideals for cooperation with the state within the traditional economy.<\/p>\n<p>Oleg Cash Coin has unpicked the tangled links between big crypto projects and officials in the new presidential administration\u2014and what their leaders are after.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The PayPal diaspora<\/h2>\n<p>One of the most influential crypto lobbyists in America is PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel\u2014venture capitalist by trade and technocrat by temperament.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>His firm, Founders Fund, began aggressively buying bitcoin in 2014 and exited all its positions before the 2022 market crash, booking about $1.8bn in profit. According to Reuters, the fund returned to crypto in the second half of 2023, <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/peter-thiels-founders-fund-invests-200-million-in-bitcoin-and-ethereum-ahead-of-rally\">investing<\/a> $200m ahead of BTC-ETF approval.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Thiel\u2019s patronage, his old acquaintance and partner at the businessman\u2019s Mithril Capital fund, J.D. Vance, ended up as U.S. vice-president. When Vance decided to run for the Senate in 2022, Thiel donated $15m to his campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The vice-president also raised $93m to set up his own venture firm, Narya Capital. He was helped not only by Thiel but also by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) co-founder Marc Andreessen.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>a16z was one of the main sponsors of Fairshake\u2014a crypto-oriented political committee that in 2024 allocated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coindesk.com\/news-analysis\/2024\/12\/02\/crypto-cash-fueled-53-members-of-the-next-u-s-congress\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">about $140m<\/a> to support candidates running for Congress. Hence the appointment of a16z crypto\u2019s policy director <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/brian-quintenz-emerges-as-leading-candidate-for-cftc-chair\">Brian Quintenz<\/a> as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) hardly comes as a surprise.<\/p>\n<p>All of the above are closely tied to Elon Musk. In 2022 a16z, alongside Binance and Sequoia, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2022\/05\/05\/sequoia-binance-and-fidelity-back-elon-musks-bid-for-twitter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">became<\/a> among the biggest investors in the Twitter buyout. In 2024 the same firms, except Binance, began \u201chelping\u201d Trump pick candidates for key posts in the administration. The New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/12\/06\/us\/politics\/trump-elon-musk-silicon-valley.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">lists<\/a> the following people close to Thiel and Musk who influence the White House:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Marc Andreessen \u2014 founder of a16z;\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Jared Birchall \u2014 head of Musk\u2019s family office, adviser to the Dogecoin Foundation;\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Sean Maguire \u2014 partner at Sequoia Capital;\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Trey Stevens \u2014 co-founder of Anduril;\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Shyam Sankar \u2014 chief technology officer at Palantir;\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>David Marcus \u2014 CEO of Lightspark, former head of Meta\u2019s blockchain unit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Musk now heads a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) created specifically for him, and the designation of \u201ccrypto czar\u201d went to David Sacks, formerly PayPal\u2019s chief operating officer.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That list would seem enough to gauge how deeply crypto-linked business has penetrated the presidential administration, but there is another notable player.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The market for connections<\/h2>\n<p>Tether stands apart in this context: it ranks among the 20 largest buyers of U.S. government debt. Cantor Fitzgerald, led by Howard Lutnick\u2014the current commerce secretary\u2014acts as the operator purchasing and holding Treasuries for the USDT issuer. According to the Wall Street Journal, the bank <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/cantor-fitzgerald-secures-5-stake-in-tether-reports-wsj\">owns<\/a> 5% of Tether\u2019s shares.<\/p>\n<p>Delve into Tether\u2019s history and among its founders you will find billionaire Brock Pierce. He was also a director of the Bitcoin Foundation, the founder of EOS, and one of his companies <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2019\/02\/06\/the-plot-to-revive-mt-gox-and-repay-victims-bitcoin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">featured<\/a> in the Mt.Gox case.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pierce is one handshake away from Trump. They are linked by Steve Bannon, a senior adviser to the president in his first term.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2001 Pierce founded Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE), a pioneer in services selling currency for <span data-descr=\"massively multiplayer online role-playing game\" class=\"old_tooltip\">MMORPG<\/span>s. In 2006 Bannon became IGE\u2019s chief executive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2018 he <a href=\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/news\/former-trump-advisor-steve-bannon-calls-crypto-revolutionary-plans-entry-into-market\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">said<\/a> that in 2016 Pierce\u2019s work on Trump\u2019s presidential campaign kept them from focusing on joint ventures in crypto.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2019 EOS bought, for $30m, a domain owned by MicroStrategy (now Strategy) to launch the social network Voice. Investors in the project included Thiel, Chinese mining giant <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/us-customs-releases-seized-bitmain-asic-miners\">Bitmain<\/a> and Galaxy Digital\u2019s chief executive, Mike Novogratz.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A year later MicroStrategy chief Michael Saylor announced the first public bitcoin purchase worth $250m. More than 40% of the company\u2019s shares, as of March 2021, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/Archives\/edgar\/data\/1050446\/000119312521117745\/d64521ddef14a.htm#rom64521_712\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">were held<\/a> by BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard Group and Citadel. That suggests financiers had already approved Saylor\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the \u201clast\u201d to the market of \u201cmutually beneficial\u201d crypto ties was the camp comprising Coinbase, Grayscale and Barry Silbert\u2019s Digital Currency Group (DCG, Grayscale\u2019s parent). Silbert stood at the origins of Ripple, Coinbase, CoinDesk and other projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>DCG\u2019s relationships reached beyond Republicans to Democrats. Larry Summers, a key adviser on the company\u2019s board, served as U.S. Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and headed the National Economic Council under Barack Obama.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The political calculus shifted after FTX collapsed in 2022. The Democrats lost influence in the market, and for many their role in crypto came to be embodied by <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/gary-genslers-departure-a-retrospective-on-the-sec-chairs-tenure\">Gary Gensler<\/a>\u2014now the former head of the <span data-descr=\"U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission\" class=\"old_tooltip\">SEC<\/span>\u2014who <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/us-government-accused-of-aiding-ftx-by-lawyer\">was reminded<\/a> of his personal ties to Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s family.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Many accepted the market\u2019s new rules, which now favour state regulation focused on domestic crypto businesses and dollar-backed stablecoins. Even the neutral Coinbase <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/cryptocurrency-firms-spend-134-million-on-us-elections\">joined in<\/a>, allocating $25m to Fairshake for the 2026 midterms, while Ripple donated $5m to Trump\u2019s inauguration.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Saylor openly <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/saylor\/status\/1865473610942464056\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">urges<\/a> the destruction of gold as an asset class. In his view, the savings of \u201cAmerica\u2019s enemies\u201d kept in banks would be debased, and Washington would control \u201cthe global reserve-capital network\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>It seems that instead of advancing the principles of decentralised systems, we have ended up with yet another financial institution managing capital and liquidity flows. Even on social networks, the old anti-state-monopoly spirit of the crypto market is ever harder to find.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the FTX collapse, many American crypto projects lost faith in the Democratic Party and redirected money and effort into lobbying their interests around Donald Trump. The market appears to be entering a new era, as many swap earlier ideals for cooperation with the state within the traditional economy. Oleg Cash Coin has unpicked the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1144],"tags":[991,842,26],"class_list":["post-22694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-longreads","tag-donald-trump","tag-politics","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"27","promo_type":"","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}