Stand With Crypto has had one problem since the Coinbase-backed 501(c)4 launched in 2023 to mobilize crypto voters: proving that those voters exist.
The sheer amount of the Fairshake super PAC network’s very real cash has often overshadowed Stand With Crypto’s grassroots aspirations. Critics have long dubbed the group to be a case of “astroturfing.”
Away from Washington this year, though, Stand With Crypto is trying to build the bones of a proper mobilization org. The operation will be put to the test in the 2026 midterms – a job that’s fallen to Community Director Mason Lynaugh.
Stand With Crypto is focused on driving Congress to enact market structure legislation in September. After that, it’s election time.
“We did such a good job in 2024 of proving that the crypto voter is real,” Lynaugh said in an interview. “But 2026 is where we prove that the crypto voter is a defining constituency for the next generation, and it’s a time when we hold politicians accountable.”
Ground game. Lynaugh has heard the word “astroturf” thrown around. But Lynaugh argued that the group has sharpened its grassroots focus by embracing a “state chapter” approach in places like Arizona and Georgia.
Lynaugh said most chapters were focused on market structure at the federal level. But he credited the Arizona group with helping push a bill that would convert digital assets left in the state’s unclaimed property vaults into a “strategic reserve.”
Enter Congress. We spent some time this week asking Democrats what they make of the “crypto voter.” Republicans, who almost universally support the industry, don’t need as much convincing. But Democrats’ answers were instructive.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who received backing from Fairshake in his 2024 Senate bid and supported the GENIUS Act, said the bloc was real.
“The extent of it, I think, can be very debatable,” Gallego said. “But when you’re dealing with really small margins in a lot of these elections, and you’re dealing with communities that we need – for example, Black men and Latino men, who are very crypto positive – it does matter.”
Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who doesn’t take corporate PAC funding but voted for GENIUS, was more skeptical. “I have only, maybe one or two recollections of someone coming to me very clearly [with their] first priority being about crypto,” Kim said. “It’s very rare that I hear that.”
Then, you’ve got a battleground senator like Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who voted for GENIUS. We asked whether he’s thinking about crypto as an electoral force in 2026.
“I have not thought deeply about the politics of it,” Ossoff said. “I just try to look at the policy, on the merits.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) voted against final passage of the GENIUS Act. He voted for it.
