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   those under legal fire, and he clearly felt victimized. He told   
   Bloomberg that the federal government was acting like “a bully,” and   
   tweeted, “Dems continue to enable Gensler’s unlawful war on   
   crypto—sabotaging the ability for American innovation to thrive. It’s   
   no wonder the GOP has announced a pro-crypto stance . . . . Voters are   
   paying attention.” (Last year, a federal judge upheld some portions of   
   the S.E.C.’s case against Ripple and dismissed others.)   
      
   To certain people, the government’s approach felt oddly aggressive. One   
   crypto executive told me she discovered that her bank accounts had been   
   frozen—with no explanation—only when she tried to make a withdrawal to   
   repair a catastrophic home-septic-system failure. Around this time,   
   various regulatory agencies were warning banks about the risks posed by   
   the crypto industry. When the executive’s accounts were later   
   unfrozen—again, without a clear explanation—she was left wondering if   
   the government’s goal was to intimidate the industry. (The Office of   
   the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks, said   
   that it does not direct banks to freeze individual accounts.)   
      
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   The Biden Administration’s oppositional stance, however, seemed   
   warranted when, in 2022, FTX—the enormous crypto exchange and hedge   
   fund led by Sam Bankman-Fried—imploded amid revelations that more than   
   eight billion dollars had been misallocated or lost. Bankman-Fried had   
   been a prolific political donor, and violating campaign-finance law was   
   among the crimes for which he was arrested. Another crypto executive   
   told me that, after the FTX scandal, many figures in the industry “just   
   wanted to put our heads down and disappear,” adding, “The less people   
   noticed us, the better.”   
      
   But among Silicon Valley’s most moneyed class retreat wasn’t an option.   
   The powerful venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz had already   
   raised more than seven billion dollars for crypto and blockchain   
   investments. The “super angel” investor Ron Conway had poured millions   
   of dollars into crypto firms through his venture fund. Lehane urged   
   some of the largest crypto investors and companies, many of whom were   
   bickering on Twitter, to instead form a coalition devoted to changing   
   the public narrative. He began hosting private biweekly gatherings,   
   known as the Ad-Hoc Group, where various collaborations were discussed.   
   Eventually, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Katie Haun,   
   recommended that the large crypto firm Coinbase, where she was a board   
   member, bring on Lehane as an adviser.   
      
   Lehane met with Coinbase’s co-founder Brian Armstrong and told him   
   that, just as with Airbnb, what seemed like a crisis was actually an   
   opportunity. “This is not the time to go quiet,” Lehane told him. “This   
   is your chance to define your company and the industry, and prove   
   you’re different from FTX.” In 2023, Lehane joined Coinbase’s Global   
   Advisory Council. Twenty-five days later, the S.E.C. sued the firm.   
      
   Lehane established a war room with the primary goal of convincing   
   politicians that the political consequences of being anti-crypto would   
   be intensely painful. The person familiar with Fairshake, who was then   
   an employee at Coinbase, told me, “It wasn’t really about explaining   
   how crypto works, or anything like that. It’s about hitting politicians   
   where they are most sensitive—reëlection.” Armstrong clarified this aim   
   at a crypto conference in 2023. The goal, he said, was to ask   
   candidates, “Are you with us? Are you against us? Are we going to be   
   running ads for you or against you?”   
      
   Although Lehane’s basic strategy resembled the one he’d used at Airbnb,   
   that campaign had been focussed on municipal issues and local political   
   races. The crypto effort was national in scale, targeting Senate and   
   House races—and potentially even the Presidential contest—and would   
   require significantly more money. Lehane suggested to Armstrong that   
   crypto firms set aside fifty million dollars for outreach. Let’s   
   earmark a hundred million, Armstrong replied. Coinbase, Ripple, and   
   Andreessen Horowitz donated more than a hundred and forty million   
   dollars to Fairshake, the crypto super pac. Executives at other firms   
   contributed millions more.   
      
   Lehane, collaborating closely with Fairshake, began crafting a pro-   
   crypto message and helping to build a “grassroots” army. “We need to   
   demonstrate there’s a crypto voter,” he told the Coinbase team.   
   “There’s millions and millions of Americans who own this stuff. We need   
   to prove they’ll vote to protect it.”   
      
   The Federal Reserve has said that in 2023 fewer than twenty million   
   Americans owned cryptocurrencies. Polling indicates that the issue is   
   not an electoral priority for many voters. One Coinbase staff member   
   pointed out this discrepancy to Lehane, saying, “I don’t know if there   
   is a crypto voter.”   
      
   “Then we’re going to make one,” Lehane replied.   
      
   Coinbase began loudly promoting the results of surveys reporting to   
   show that fifty-two million Americans owned cryptocurrencies, and that   
   many of them intended to vote to protect their digital pocketbooks.   
   Those polls indicated that sixty per cent of crypto owners were   
   millennials or Gen Z-ers, and forty-one per cent were people of   
   color—demographics that each party was trying to woo. Lehane also   
   quietly helped launch an advocacy organization, Stand with Crypto,   
   which is advertised to Coinbase’s millions of U.S. customers every time   
   they log in, and which urges cryptocurrency owners to contact their   
   lawmakers and sign petitions. The group says that it currently has more   
   than a million members. The Coinbase employee told me that Stand with   
   Crypto would identify a city with a significant population of crypto   
   enthusiasts, like Columbus, Ohio, and then inundate them with push   
   notifications aimed at organizing town halls and rallies. The employee   
   explained, “If you can get fifty or sixty people to show up, with good   
   photo angles you can make it look like hundreds. In small states or   
   close elections, that’s enough to convince a candidate they should be   
   paranoid.”   
      
   This supposed army of crypto voters fed directly into the next stage of   
   the assault: scaring politicians. Stand with Crypto built an online   
   dashboard that assigned grades to U.S. senators and representatives—and   
   to many of their challengers—which reflected their support for crypto.   
   The scores seemed to inevitably be either “A (Strongly supports   
   crypto)” or “F (Strongly against crypto),” though the data undergirding   
   the grades were sometimes specious. “Most of them hadn’t really taken a   
   side,” another Coinbase staffer told me. “So we’d, you know, look at   
   speeches they’d given, or who they were friends with, and kind of make   
   a guess. If you were friends with Elizabeth Warren, you were more   
   likely to get an F.”   
      
   Nevertheless, Lehane insisted that Fairshake maintain a nonpartisan   
   tone. The super PAC was careful to support an equal number of   
   Democratic and Republican candidates, and, following Lehane’s advice,   
   it planned to stay out of the 2024 Presidential race altogether. A   
   venture capitalist who has advised the crypto industry told me that the   
   group’s nonpartisan stance was essential, because, “if we want to get   
   the right regulations in place, we have to get a bill through Congress,   
   which means we need votes from both parties.” Moreover, Fairshake’s   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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