By cryptoadmin The crypto industry has never spent this much money to derail the political prospects of a single person: former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown.
Just one political action committee — the industry's leading Fairshake super PAC — is devoting almost $56 million to keeping Brown down. The last time it spent anything like this amount of money was to oppose the same guy two years ago, devoting about $40 million then to help Bernie Moreno knock off the longtime Senate incumbent, who was chairman of the Banking Committee.
With the $7.2 million that Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss kicked in from their own PAC to defeat Brown this year, according to the most recent federal filings, that represents about a $63 million industry stake on Tuesday’s Ohio vote and more than $100 million dollars the sector has spent in the past two years against one congressional veteran in Ohio.
Why does the industry so desperately need Brown to go away? It doesn't want history to repeat itself. The senator spent years atop the committee that needed to consent to crypto legislation, and he refused to pick it up, leaving the U.S. House of Representatives crypto efforts languishing. In the two years since he's been sidelined, the Senate passed a significant stablecoin bill and got within sight of the finish line on a market structure bill.
Now the polling puts the Ohio vote in this year's heap of Senate tossups, with Brown maintaining a slight lead over incumbent Jon Husted but within the margin of error for most polls. Even so, the betting on Kalshi gives Brown a 68% chance of a Senate comeback. The same platform gives the wider Democratic Party a 68% chance of retaking the Senate.
If he returns to the Senate and Democrats control that chamber of Congress, the crypto sector's political analysts expect he'll be given a prominent role, possibly at the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, where he'd previously led a subcommittee. The Senate's leadership roles are based on seniority, and Brown's service time has now been broken by the previous election loss, so his party would have to make an exception to give him a high-profile position.
Election 2026PACsRegulation 
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The Future of Equity Ownership: An Issuer's Guide to Tokenized Equities
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Tokenized equities are coming with or without issuers. Issuer-sponsored models make the token the share itself, preserving control and full rights.
By CoinDesk Research Sep 29, 2026 Commissioned byBullish
Tokenized equities are coming with or without issuers. Issuer-sponsored models make the token the share itself, preserving control and full rights.
Why it matters:
Tokenized equities are coming with or without issuers. Issuer-sponsored models make the token the share itself, preserving control and full rights.
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