In brief
- Crypto.com has donated $35 million over the past year to the pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc.
- Weeks after its most recent donation, the CFTC backed the company in a major lawsuit.
- On Monday, the OCC conditionally approved Crypto.com’s application for a national banking charter.
Crypto.com ratcheted up its prolific pro-Trump spending spree in January, gifting another $5 million to a super PAC backing the president, according to new FEC filings.
That makes $35 million that the crypto exchange has donated to MAGA Inc. in the last year alone. And within weeks of the latest donation, Crypto.com was the direct beneficiary of moves from multiple agencies in Donald Trump’s administration.
Last week, the Trump CFTC opted to wade into a pending lawsuit between Crypto.com and the state of Nevada over sports-related prediction markets, filing a motion in support of the company. That decisive action came just months after the CFTC’s new chair and sole commissioner, Mike Selig, told a Senate committee he would defer to the courts on the thorny issue.
And just yesterday, a key regulator within the Treasury Department conditionally approved a national trust bank charter for Crypto.com—a significant victory that the company’s CEO said tees up the exchange to soon become “a one-stop-shop qualified custodian” for major financial institutions.
Both Crypto.com’s bank charter and its super PAC donations are in the name of the exchange’s parent company, Foris Dax.
A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment on Crypto.com’s political spending. News of the latest donation was first reported by Popular Information.
While many industry firms have given to causes associated with the president—including his inauguration, and the $300 million White House ballroom he seeks to build where the East Wing once stood—many of these companies have shirked away from giving money directly to Trump-aligned PACs.
Industry bigwigs like Coinbase, Ripple, and Tether have instead opted to fund their own super PACs, which they argue are non-partisan and exclusively focused on crypto policy.
Crypto.com, meanwhile, has gone a different route. The vast majority of its political spending has gone directly to the president’s allies, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.
But the company’s ties to the president don’t end there. Months after its first multi-million dollar donation to a pro-Trump PAC last year, Crypto.com announced a strategic partnership with the president’s publicly traded media company, Trump Media and Technology Group.
That arrangement has since borne several products, including Trump-branded crypto ETFs backed by the company, and a Crypto.com-powered prediction market tied to Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.
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