Molly WhiteAs an active federal contractor, Coinbase is prohibited from making political contributions, including to super PACs. This makes $50 million that they have contributed in violation of pay-to-play laws for contractors.
See my reporting on their previous violation, which is being reviewed by the FEC: https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/
Coinbase appears to have violated campaign finance laws with a $25 million super PAC donation
Actively involved in contract negotiations with a federal government agency, Coinbase was likely prohibited from making its $25 million contribution to the Fairshake cryptocurrency-focused super PAC in May 2024.
The $50 million is just their illegal contributions, by the way. Coinbase has spent around $75 million on this election cycle in total.
SouprMatt@molly0xfff Considering how lax federal election funding laws are, it takes some seriously bad behavior to actually break those laws.
KraigThe pervasive and obvious corruption is as bad — maybe worse? — than any mafia.
This last 10 years (ie Trumpification of the GOP) have really exposed how brittle, broken, and downright incompetent the American govt and institutions really are.
How ill-equipped and ill-designed those institutions — and people — are to deal with the power of wealth (eg musk, Murdoch, etc), casual lawlessness, and willful malfeasance (eg Fox News, Jan 6, Supreme Court, etc).