Sanders Targets Crypto’s 3-PAC Lobby, Casts Bitcoin Sector as a Political Foe

Crypto News

Senator Bernie Sanders has reopened his campaign against the cryptocurrency industry, vowing to confront what he calls the outsized political power of digital-asset money in Washington. Speaking at a Minneapolis rally in support of Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s U.S. Senate bid, the Vermont independent pledged to “take on crypto, the AI industry, AIPAC and other billionaire super PACs” to help send Flanagan to the Senate. The remarks, posted to X, framed the sector as one of four moneyed forces he intends to challenge. Sanders, the most prominent democratic socialist in Congress, tied the crypto lobby directly to his broader push for campaign-finance reform, arguing that concentrated wealth is distorting American elections.

Sanders’s skepticism is long-standing. Across successive congressional debates over digital-asset legislation, he has warned that industry-friendly rules would reward wealthy insiders while pushing price volatility and regulatory gaps onto ordinary investors. His view is that a market spanning Bitcoin and smaller altcoin tokens carries structural risks for retail participants who lack the protections common in traditional finance. That framing has made him a consistent opponent of bills the industry has lobbied for, and it dovetails with his decades-long argument that unchecked corporate money erodes democratic accountability. For Sanders, crypto is less a technology debate than a test of who ultimately writes the rules.

Central to that critique is the GENIUS Act, the Republican-backed stablecoin framework Sanders opposed and that became law in 2025. The measure set federal rules for dollar-pegged tokens, a category distinct from algorithmic stablecoins that rely on code rather than cash reserves to hold their peg. Sanders argued the law tilted toward issuers at the expense of consumer safeguards, a recurring theme in his objection to what he labels industry-written legislation. Supporters counter that clear stablecoin standards reduce systemic risk and bring a fast-growing payments market under supervision. The disagreement underscores how stablecoin policy has become a central battleground in Washington’s crypto fight.

Sanders is not alone. Fellow progressive Elizabeth Warren, who leads what critics dub the anti-crypto camp in Congress, has escalated parallel warnings about political money. Warren has argued that dark-money groups are spending millions to sway elections, listing cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence among the largest sources of outside political spending. She has repeatedly targeted the industry’s lobbying muscle and criticized what she calls industry-written crypto bills that, in her telling, prioritize corporate profit over consumer protection. The alignment between Sanders and Warren signals a coordinated progressive front heading into the next election cycle, one explicitly naming crypto as an adversary rather than a constituency.

The backdrop is the rise of crypto-backed political organizations into some of the biggest financial players in U.S. elections. The most prominent is Fairshake, a super PAC operating alongside two affiliated committees, Protect Progress and Defend American Jobs. During the 2024 cycle, the three-PAC network spent heavily on congressional races, deploying industry cash to shape primaries and general elections across both parties. That spending has drawn precisely the scrutiny Sanders and Warren now voice, turning the machinery of crypto political giving into a campaign issue in its own right ahead of the coming midterm contests.

Fairshake’s war chest has been fueled by major industry names, including exchange operator Coinbase, XRP issuer Ripple Labs and venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Backers argue the spending is aimed at electing lawmakers who understand digital assets and favor clearer regulation, not at buying influence. From tools such as the AI crypto wallet to decentralized-finance protocols like Aave, the sector says regulatory certainty would protect consumers and keep innovation onshore. Critics see it differently: for Sanders, a system in which billionaires can, in his words, buy candidates and elections is “not democracy,” and ending super PACs is the remedy he prescribes.

Read together, these threads describe a widening collision between crypto capital and progressive politics just as sentiment turns cautious. Our reading of COINOTAG’s aggregate market data shows the Fear & Greed Index at 25 — Extreme Fear — with Bitcoin dominance at 69.7% and total crypto market capitalization near $1.91 trillion, a defensive backdrop in which regulatory risk weighs heavily. With Bitcoin trading well below its all-time high, the political fight over who writes digital-asset rules is no longer peripheral; it is a primary variable for markets. The GENIUS Act, already on the books, and the super-PAC spending disclosed in public filings suggest this contest will intensify, not fade, through the next cycle.