Molly WhiteIt’s finally time to release my newest project: https://www.followthecrypto.org/
This website provides a real-time lens into the cryptocurrency industry’s efforts to influence 2024 elections in the United States.
I have been working on this for the past two months, after growing increasingly concerned about the influence this industry is trying to exert. Did you know crypto companies have spent more this cycle than the oil or pharmaceutical industries, despite being a small fraction of the size?
There is more to come, including a bot that will post real-time updates about contributions or expenditures, which you can follow in advance at @[email protected]. You can also learn more in my announcement post over at Citation Needed: https://citationneeded.news/follow-the-crypto.
Please share widely! And, if you don’t already, consider supporting my work. This kind of independent research is what I do full-time, entirely thanks to support from people like you. https://www.mollywhite.net/support/
Mark@molly0xfff Chaos in the financial markets is good for Crypto so we know which candidate they support. Pity the retirees who depend on their 401Ks to live.
Cali@molly0xfff that is wild 😳
Noah Cook@molly0xfff For a bit of perspective, that "all health" spending is where it is in part because healthcare is 1/6 of the economy, but also because CMS's budget is a bit over $1 Trillion-with-a-T. That includes Medicare, the federal portions of Medicaid/CHIP, and other programs.
So $200 million in lobbying is perhaps understandable. What the hell does the crypto industry expect to get? I suspect that the answer is not entirely financial.
MarkV@UncivilServant @molly0xfff I wonder how much of this is “regular” domestic spend vs. foreign influence using crypto as a hard-to-trace backdoor to influence US elections.
Sophie Schmieg@UncivilServant @molly0xfff depends, does financial fraud count as being financial? In the end, that's how I would gauge most, if not all, cryptocurrency lobbying: attempts at making fraud and scam legal.
@sophieschmieg @molly0xfff Yes and no.
Obviously they want to do that, but most industries do not need to spend this much money to do so. In Medicine, you see a lot of money being spent in part because there's at least a trillion in federal spending involved, even without any new laws or regs that would affect an overall market a sixth of US GDP.
There's nothing remotely comparable at stake financially for crypto, so I assume they have broader sociopolitical goals and are buying access.
Ted Mielczarek@molly0xfff I was shocked at first by how low the defense sector spending is but I guess they've already got full regulatory capture and a near-$1T budget that never goes down no matter which party controls any branch of government so what are they even spending money lobbying for?
BlindMansBinary@tedmielczarek @molly0xfff Defense has regulatory capture the other way around -- it's practically a state-run industry by now, although Congress is trying to undo what they've done it's going to take years.
As for the budget, it's the lowest as a proportion of economic activity since before WW2, despite the growing threats to the country. We're sleepwalking into a catastrophe that will end up way more pricey than had we chose to do it right and deter war in the first place.
@BlindMansBinary @molly0xfff we still spend more than the next 5 countries combined so I don't think "spend more" is a reasonable answer.
@tedmielczarek @molly0xfff There are definitely structural reforms that need to happen (which is why Congress is trying to undo the things that have turned defense into a semi-state industry), but there's also only so much you can expect when the average highly-skilled American worker makes so much more than their peers in countries 2-5. The U.S. has to outspend its own non-defense private sector to be able to produce defense goods.
Allan Chow@molly0xfff crypto return on Opex is astronomically high so long as they can find more people to hold the bag and the US market is still less tapped than Asia and South america
aardvark
Kevin Karhan 
aproitzThe #Reasons, why the #Cryptoindustry pumps so much #Money into the #USElection and #Interestgroups would be very #interesting too.
Mark@molly0xfff what a waste
notsoloud@molly0xfff
What interest could the industry most closely linked to organized crime have in a US election?
What interest could the industry most closely linked to organized crime have in a US election?
Martin Vermeer FCD@molly0xfff Perhaps time to just ban crypto. It has no - or even negative - societal value.
Alexander@molly0xfff Is it really crypto, or could other lobby groups be behind what looks like "crypto" on the outside?
@Scriddie the site shows that the money is coming from cryptocurrency firms, or in some cases from VCs with investments in the crypto industry