Crypto’s Texas Takeover: $28M and Counting

The Hook

The crypto industry already bought Washington in 2024. Now it’s coming for Texas — and it’s spending faster this time.

When Fairshake — the cryptocurrency sector’s flagship super PAC — entered 2026 with $193 million in cash on hand, political veterans took notice. That’s not a war chest. That’s an arsenal. And Texas, with its sprawling congressional map and high-stakes redistricting drama, has become the industry’s most expensive battleground outside a presidential year.

Here’s the number that reframes everything: crypto-aligned super PACs have already dropped at least $28 million on congressional races nationwide this cycle. At the same point in 2024, that figure was $22 million. We’re not even at the halfway point of the election calendar.

In Texas alone, two Fairshake-linked PACs — Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress — have committed more than $2.5 million to state candidates. That already matches the industry’s total Texas spend from the entire 2024 cycle. With months of campaigning still ahead, crypto’s political machine isn’t just keeping pace with 2024 — it’s lapping it.

But here’s what most miss: this isn’t just about buying friendly votes on obscure blockchain bills. This is a sophisticated, ideologically flexible operation that spans both parties, targets specific committee assignments, and punishes opponents regardless of their political stripe. The crypto lobby has stopped playing defense. It’s running the board.

What’s Behind It

From fringe bet to $193M war machine

Not long ago, cryptocurrency was the political equivalent of a third-party candidate — easy to dismiss, easier to ignore. That era is over.

Fairshake and its affiliated PACs — Protect Progress on the Democratic side and Defend American Jobs on the Republican — represent something genuinely new in American political finance: a single-issue industry bloc that doesn’t care which party wins, as long as its preferred candidates do. In 2024, that strategy produced a 53-for-58 win rate on backed congressional candidates nationwide, including four from Texas. That’s not a political operation. That’s a closing argument.

As KSAT first reported, the same machinery is now running hotter in 2026, with Texas as a central theater. The industry secured a landmark policy win when Congress passed the GENIUS Act in July 2025 — the first federal regulatory framework for crypto, pushed through with bipartisan support. You’d think that would cool the spending. It hasn’t.

The reason is straightforward: the GENIUS Act was a win, but it wasn’t the end. The Clarity Act — which critics argue would reduce oversight of crypto markets — is still being negotiated. One wrong vote, one hostile committee chair, and the regulatory landscape shifts.

The industry won the law — and kept spending anyway. That tells you everything about what they really fear.

Bipartisan by design, not by accident

Crypto PACs aren’t ideological — they’re transactional. Protect Progress, Fairshake’s progressive arm, has poured more than $1.5 million into electing Rep. Christian Menefee, a 37-year-old Democrat running in a Houston-area runoff against Rep. Al Green. Meanwhile, Defend American Jobs has spent $771,000 backing Jessica Steinmann, a former Trump administration official running in Magnolia, Texas.

Same super PAC umbrella. Opposite ends of the political spectrum. Both bets placed with cold precision.

The industry’s Federal Election Commission filings tell the story in black and white: this is coordinated, structured, and disciplined spending — not scattered enthusiasm from a sector flush with cash. Daron Shaw, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin, put it plainly: the goal is access. “The fear is there’s going to be significant regulation on the part of Congress, and so [crypto PACs] want to find people who would be willing to at least listen to them.”

That’s the quiet part said out loud. They’re not buying outcomes. They’re buying open doors.

Why It Matters

The race that defines crypto’s 2026 playbook

Nearly two-thirds of all crypto spending in Texas this cycle is flowing into a single runoff: Menefee vs. Green in a Houston-area district covering much of Harris County. The numbers are striking — $1.5 million for one candidate in one race — but the strategic logic behind it is sharper still.

Rep. Al Green, 78, sits on the House Financial Services Committee and has been one of the most vocal critics of pro-crypto legislation. He voted against the GENIUS Act. He opposes the Clarity Act. He has publicly flagged cryptocurrency’s potential to undermine U.S. sanctions and raised alarms about the environmental footprint of crypto mining. The industry group Stand with Crypto gave him an “F” rating.

Green said it plainly from the House floor on March 19: “When you get an ‘F’ that means they don’t like you. When they don’t like you, they’ll do whatever they can … to expel you, to evict you.”

Menefee, by contrast, earned an “A” from Stand with Crypto. He frames crypto not as a speculative asset but as a tool already embedded in everyday life — particularly for younger and minority communities. “Over 70 million Americans have crypto right now, and a lot of them are young, a lot of them live in Texas-18, a lot of them are Black and brown folks,” he told reporters. “My job is to protect them.”

The generational gap — 37 vs. 78 — is real, but what’s more significant is the committee positioning. Whoever wins that seat inherits Green’s proximity to financial services legislation. The industry is spending $1.5 million to control that chair.

The Republican flank: quieter, but just as deliberate

On the GOP side, the calculus is different but the ambition is identical.

Defend American Jobs has deployed capital across three Republican races with surgical precision:

• Jessica Steinmann ($771,000) — Former Trump official and Cruz aide; explicitly pro-digital assets running to succeed Rep. Morgan Luttrell in Magnolia
• Trever Nehls ($141,000) — Twin brother of Rep. Troy Nehls; won his primary in a solidly Republican district outside Houston after his brother declined reelection
• Chris Gober (~$92,000) — Conservative attorney seeking to replace retiring Rep. Michael McCaul in Central Texas; emphasizes tech investment and innovation hubs

None of these are long-shot bets. They’re calculated placements in safe or likely-Republican seats — districts where the crypto industry can lock in a favorable vote for a decade with a single primary investment. Michael Beckel of Issue One, a nonpartisan group focused on campaign finance reform, summarized the shift bluntly: “The cryptocurrency industry wants people in Washington and in state houses to be able to pick up their phone calls.”

That’s the endgame. Not headlines. Phone calls.

What to Watch

The Menefee-Green runoff is the most immediate tell. If Protect Progress flips that seat with $1.5 million in a Democratic primary, it validates a template the industry will replicate nationally: identify committee-positioned opponents, fund credible challengers in primaries, and let the math do the rest. A Green survival, on the other hand, would be the first real test of whether crypto’s spending machine has limits.

Beyond that single race, here are the signals worth tracking closely:

• Clarity Act negotiations — The bill’s fate in the current Congress directly determines whether the industry’s spending plateau lifts even higher into the fall; stalled negotiations mean more money, not less
• Fairshake’s $193M burn rate — Watch FEC filings quarterly; if the PAC deploys more than 30% of its cash before summer, expect a major escalation targeting Senate races or swing-district generals
• Steinmann and Gober general election performance — Both races are in Republican-leaning districts, but turnout and margins will signal how effectively crypto spending translates into general-election wins, not just primary victories
• Trever Nehls committee assignments — If elected, where he lands on House committees will reveal whether the industry’s investment in his race was about ideology or infrastructure
• Copycat PAC formation — Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has already warned that crypto’s 2024 model had a “chilling effect” on lawmakers; watch for counter-PAC activity from regulatory advocacy groups or tech-skeptic coalitions

The deeper story here isn’t about any single candidate or race. It’s about velocity. The crypto industry spent $22 million at this point in 2024 and went 53-for-58. It’s already at $28 million in 2026 with the cycle still warming up. If the win rate holds anywhere close to that, the industry won’t just have allies in Congress — it will have built the most effective single-issue political machine since the NRA was at its peak.

The difference is that crypto moves at the speed of capital, not convention. And right now, capital is moving very fast toward Texas.