Crypto Firms Pour Millions Into Trump Inauguration

The cryptocurrency industry, fresh off a 2024 elections spending spree, has turned its influence efforts in recent months to a new target: celebrating the start of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term.

Leading crypto firms have pumped at least $10 million into the Trump inaugural fund, and top executives are flocking to Washington ahead of the incoming president’s swearing-in on Monday.

Crypto companies including Ripple, Coinbase, Kraken, Robinhood and Circle have made seven-figure donations to Trump’s inaugural committee since Election Day — part of a wave of corporate contributions that Trump has reeled in as big businesses scrambled to curry favor with the incoming administration.

The donations, which will fund the glitzy official events surrounding the inauguration, exemplify the giddiness across the digital asset sector as Trump prepares to become the first-ever explicitly pro-crypto U.S. president. The industry is eyeing any avenue of influence as it pushes the incoming administration and a GOP-controlled Congress to complete a regulatory overhaul that could boost its growth.

“This is a moment of celebration for the industry,” said Kristin Smith, CEO of the Blockchain Association, a leading crypto trade association.

The industry laid the groundwork for that celebration by pouring more than $160 million into a super PAC that helped elect a bipartisan slate of lawmakers sympathetic to its agenda. The high-dollar influence campaigns illustrate how the crypto industry has become a major new well that politicians are tapping for contributions, helping it play an outsize role in American politics.

Crypto firms are hosting a sold-out unofficial inaugural ball on Friday at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in downtown Washington. The event, which is set to feature Snoop Dogg as a musical guest, is being put on in part by David Bailey, who runs a bitcoin conference that Trump spoke at last summer. Other sponsors include the Coinbase-backed advocacy group Stand With Crypto and the digital asset firms Exodus, Anchorage Digital and Kraken.

It all comes as crypto executives and their lobbyists are scrambling to gain sway over the policy changes that Trump has vowed to usher in, which include stockpiling bitcoin and putting in place a new framework for how digital assets are regulated — “written by people who love your industry.”

One target of fixation for players in the crypto space is a digital assets advisory council that Trump has vowed to create, led by incoming White House crypto and AI czar David Sacks and former North Carolina Congressional candidate Bo Hines.

“Everyone is jockeying for it,” said one Washington crypto lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive dynamics within the industry.

Several top executives are expected to be in town for the inauguration, along with other tech leaders who have taken steps to get in Trump’s good graces in recent months. And many firms have shelled out to fill the inaugural fund’s coffers.

The crypto firm Ripple, a major target of enforcement action from the SEC that the industry decried during the Biden era, donated $5 million in digital tokens to the inaugural committee, according to a spokesperson for the company. Two of the firm’s top executives, CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty, who met with Trump earlier this month at Mar-a-Lago, plan to attend the swearing-in.

The U.S. crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken and the stablecoin company Circle, which issues a token that is pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar, each donated $1 million to the inaugural fund. Robinhood, a leading online brokerage that dabbles in crypto, donated $2 million, according to a spokesperson. Top Coinbase executives including CEO Brian Armstrong were on Capitol Hill on Friday, ahead of the inauguration. Armstrong has twice met with Trump, according to a spokesperson for the company, including once since Election Day.

“I think it’s important to ensure that industry … can engage with this administration and engage in a meaningful way during the transition period,” Kara Calvert, vice president for U.S. policy at Coinbase, said of the firm’s donation. “This is the most pro-crypto president that we’ve ever seen, and he has made a platform clear now for months. And that is a really attractive characteristic right now.”

The donations have become an early target for Democrats and watchdog groups, who say the president is selling influence.

“Billionaires think they bought this government,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a leading critic of the crypto industry in Congress, told reporters Thursday. “They're sure throwing their weight around.”

Irie Sentner and Eleanor Mueller contributed to this report.