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The strategy worked. The industry’s more than $130 million in 2024 election spending helped install at least six new pro-crypto senators and over a dozen crypto-friendly representatives,¹ defeating key regulatory advocates including Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown after a $40 million ad campaign. Donald Trump has received $105 million in campaign contributions from crypto and AI companies and their executives — while many of these same companies simultaneously enriched him personally with more than $1 billion through business deals involving his expanding portfolio of crypto business ventures.² After his election, he staffed the White House with crypto and AI venture capitalists, giving the industries direct access to policymaking at the highest levels. He has also pushed for deregulatory legislation that would benefit these industries and, by extension, his own holdings. Since then, we’ve seen at least 21 enforcement actions or investigations against crypto companies dropped or paused, industry-written legislation advanced through Congress, and regulators who had pushed for consumer protections replaced with Trump loyalists who gutted the agencies’ regulatory capacity. Congress, shaped by hundreds of millions in industry spending, has refused to address his blatant crypto-related corruption or provide meaningful oversight.

“This reckless deregulatory agenda, driven by greed, threatens to destabilize our financial system and pummel the health of our economy. The end result could be a financial crisis that devastates individuals, families, and communities, regardless of whether they invested in crypto, and could lead to a bailout that costs many billions of dollars in government intervention and recovery efforts.”

Americans for Financial ReformWe’ll All Pay the Cost for Crypto CorruptionMarch 5, 2026

Artificial intelligence companies are now deploying similar tactics, spending heavily to shape policy around artificial intelligence development and regulation. They’re fighting local oversight and moratoriums that would give communities power to reject the resource-intensive AI data centers they increasingly oppose.³ Some industry PACs are working to block state or federal legislation that would impose stricter regulations on AI companies, hold them liable for harms caused by their products, require safety assessments, or limit surveillance. And while others claim to champion safety, these efforts often serve to disadvantage competitors rather than protect the public. Both factions echo the crypto industry in framing their self-serving lobbying as principled advocacy aimed at defending innovation, while in reality a handful of well-funded companies are working to shape regulations that will benefit their businesses at the expense of everyone else.

Most voters have no idea this is happening. The crypto and AI industries have poured hundreds of millions into elections, but much of that spending is obscured through super PACs that run ads that don’t mention the industries funding them, or even the topics they are trying to address. Candidates backed by crypto and AI money don’t campaign on crypto or AI policy — they run on other issues while quietly committing to industry-friendly positions. By the time voters learn who funded a campaign, the election is over and the policies are already being signed into law. A recent CoinDesk survey found that 73% of voters disapprove of government officials having crypto business ties, yet 55% weren’t aware of the president’s involvement in the industry, and only 17% knew he co-founded World Liberty Financial.⁴

This website tracks this spending in real time,^a documenting the flow of money from tech companies to politicians and making visible the influence these industries are buying in our democracy.

Tech Influence Watch (formerly Follow the Crypto) is a project of Citation Needed, my independent newsletter covering cryptocurrency, technology, and tech policy — where the longer-form reporting, analysis, and context behind this data lives. I’m Molly White, a technology writer, researcher, and software engineer. I also run Web3 is Going Just Great, documenting the wider landscape of crypto industry failures.

Tech Influence Watch, like all Citation Needed projects, has no ads, no paywalls, and receives no industry funding. This means the companies I’m tracking can’t buy my silence or influence what I report, but it also means this work only exists because readers support it. The crypto and AI industries are spending hundreds of millions to shape policy in their favor. Independent documentation of that spending is the only way to begin to counter it. Subscribe to Citation Needed to keep this work going.