A super PAC funded by the cryptocurrency industry is preparing to spend at least $30 million in the Ohio Senate race to try to block Democrat Sherrod Brown from returning to Washington, the group’s most aggressive move of the 2026 midterm cycle to date.
The move by Fairshake, a super PAC group bankrolled by a trio of leading crypto companies, comes just days after Democrats voted down an industry-backed digital asset bill on the Senate floor.
The group spent more than $40 million in 2024 to help defeat Brown, who was then the Senate Banking Committee chair and a leading critic of the crypto sector in the chamber. Brown is now mounting a comeback bid in the Buckeye State, where he is facing Sen. Jon Husted in a special election to replace Vice President JD Vance.
The Ohio race has long been seen as a top target for the crypto group, which has more than $120 million in the bank. But its money had been kept on the sidelines for months as the crypto bill, known as the Clarity Act, was pending in the Senate, where it needed Democratic support to advance. The $30 million campaign against Brown, which the group confirmed to POLITICO, is by far its biggest play of the 2026 cycle thus far.
Brown was a key roadblock to industry-friendly crypto legislation when he served as Senate Banking chair — a perch he used to highlight risks associated with digital assets.
Ohio is one of several GOP Senate seats that Democrats are hoping to capture in order to chip away at Republicans’ majority in the chamber. Brown lost by about four percentage points in 2024 to GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno — who is now a leading crypto booster in the chamber — but Democrats hope he will perform better this year with President Donald Trump’s popularity lagging.
It’s unclear where else the crypto group will spend its war chest, which comes primarily from the crypto firms Coinbase and Ripple and the venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz. It backed both Democrats and Republicans in key 2024 Senate races, but some Democrats fear that its spending will be more lopsided in favor of the GOP this cycle as the industry seeks to punish Democrats for voting down the Clarity bill.
The Ohio spending was previously reported by the New York Times.
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