Stand With Crypto PAC

Stand With Crypto PAC is Coinbase's grassroots-styled political operation — the soft-power complement to Fairshake's hard-power spending. While Fairshake drops tens of millions on advertising to defeat crypto-hostile candidates, Stand With Crypto claims to mobilize 1.5 million crypto holder "members" as voters, creating the appearance of a grassroots movement that happens to want exactly what the crypto industry's largest companies want. The PAC's "Crypto Voter Scorecard" rates every member of Congress on crypto-friendliness, creating an industry-driven endorsement system that tells crypto holders who to vote for and against. Members who receive an 'A' rating can expect industry support; those with an 'F' can expect to face Fairshake-funded opponents. This rating system, modeled on the NRA's decades-old approach, creates a disciplining mechanism that pushes legislators toward the crypto industry's preferred policies. The "grassroots" claim is the PAC's most debated feature. Stand With Crypto was created and funded by Coinbase — a publicly traded corporation — and its member list consists primarily of Coinbase users who clicked a button on the company's app. Whether 1.5 million people clicking a button constitutes a political movement or corporate astroturf depends on one's perspective, but the distinction matters because grassroots movements carry democratic legitimacy that corporate lobbying does not. The PAC spent $8 million in 2024, a fraction of Fairshake's $133 million, focusing on voter mobilization, issue advertising, and the scorecard system. Its real value to the crypto industry is as a legitimacy-laundering operation: when legislators face criticism for voting with the crypto industry, they can point to Stand With Crypto's 1.5 million "members" as evidence of constituent support rather than corporate capture.