Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss said they’re spending $21 million to continue the crypto policy momentum led by Republican lawmakers, countering a wider industry effort that’s carefully supporting politicians from both major parties.
The U.S. congressional midterm elections are approaching next year, promising an intense political clash that could leave President Donald Trump without the Republican control of Congress that’s helped him push crypto policy past the finish line. The brothers are contributing to the Digital Freedom Fund political action committee to support GOP candidates, they said on Wednesday.
The contribution made in bitcoin will identify and support champions of President Trump’s crypto agenda in primary races and the midterm elections, Tyler Winklevoss stated on social media. If Democrats prevail in the midterms, as opposition parties often do during a presidential term, Winklevoss said they would obstruct the Trump agenda.
“We know from their past behavior that they will resort to whatever bad faith tactics and tricks they can think of to try to derail the President,” he wrote.
The brothers, who run the Gemini crypto exchange and have become a fixture at White House crypto events, have been publicly praised by Trump. However, their endorsement of Republicans contrasts with the industry’s broader insistence that crypto policy is bipartisan and should support politicians from both parties who favor the sector.
In last year’s significant congressional elections, the crypto industry built an unprecedented tower of campaign cash through the Fairshake PAC and its affiliates, outspending other sectors and rivaling big party-led PACs. This influx of campaign spending resulted in numerous political victories that bolstered the industry’s level of support in the current Congress, which has rapidly moved to support digital asset initiatives — most notably the recently passed Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.
Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, thanked the industry for unseating former Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat who previously led the committee, at a recent event in Wyoming.
Fairshake, which has already amassed $141 million for the next congressional elections after a recent $25 million boost from a major crypto firm, has deliberately split its allegiances between the parties. The industry has long emphasized that its aims are nonpartisan, and Fairshake’s affiliates sought to reinforce that position by supporting both Democrat and Republican candidates willing to advocate for crypto bills.
The super PAC favored by the Winklevoss brothers was established last month and hasn’t yet disclosed its donor activity. It is designed to spend money independently, meaning the campaigns it interacts with cannot have direct involvement in the PAC’s spending decisions. This super PAC structure also allows for unlimited spending, such as the tens of millions the industry expended in key states last year.
The Winklevosses are pursuing U.S. crypto market structure oversight that “avoids the pitfalls of overregulation, bloated licensing regimes, and increased red tape that only serves to choke off innovation, grow the Regulatory Industrial Complex, and empower the swamp,” Tyler stated.
This marks another recent development in which the founders of Gemini are diverging from the broader industry. Tyler Winklevoss emerged as a significant critic of President Trump’s nominee to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Leading crypto lobbying groups sent a letter to Trump in vigorous support of the nominee, who previously worked as a policy executive at a major venture capital firm.
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