US senators are currently debating new crypto legislation, including rules that could affect stablecoins and market structure laws.
Meanwhile, the crypto industry has been investing heavily in campaign donations and super-PAC spending across the Senate and House.
However, despite this increasing interest in the ecosystem, it’s still relatively uncommon for the financial disclosure documents for senators to include exposure to crypto companies.
Read more: CHART: Wasn’t Trump supposed to be good for crypto?
The increasing integration of crypto into existing financial firms also leads to some ambiguity about whether or not certain exposure is truly crypto exposure.
Consider Alabama. Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville is invested in PayPal, a stablecoin issuer and payments firm. However, the crypto-focused parts of the business are smaller than the other payment-focused parts of the business.
Similar issues crop up with Republican Senator Katie Britt. Her spouse owns Block, formerly Square, a company that has crypto-focused business units, but again, it is a minority of the total business.
There are several other senators who are invested in PayPal, including Jacky Rosen in Nevada and Markwayne Mullin’s spouse in Oklahoma.
Additionally, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island previously owned stock in both PayPal and Block but has since sold it.
Bernie Moreno of Ohio owns a stake in eToro, an investment company that offers crypto trading.
Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is exposed to Robinhood, a broker that also offers crypto trading.
BlackRock offers certain crypto-focused ETFs, and Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Shelley Moore Capito’s spouse both owned stakes in BlackRock.
Several senators, including Tim Sheehy of Montana and Markwayne Mullin are also exposed to Intercontinental Exchange, the firm that owns Bakkt. Trump Media and Technology was recently in talks to acquire Bakkt, though that deal seems to have fallen apart.
Do any senators have more direct stakes in cryptocurrency?
None of the senators have disclosed self-custodied stakes in crypto yet; however, some have had more direct exposure.
Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania has owned the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, and was a limited partner in Bitwise Asset Management.
Steve Daines of Montana owned a variety of different ETFs, which have since been sold, including: ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, Bitwise Crypto Industry Innovators ETF, Amplify Blockchain Leaders ETF, Vaneck Bitcoin Strategy ETF, and Valkyrie’s Bitcoin and Ether Strategy ETF.
Justin Sun, the advisor to Trump’s World Liberty Financial, has claimed he is the largest shareholder of Valkyrie.
Read more: How much Fairshake and its affiliates spent in your state
What we didn’t do
We didn’t check non-crypto-focused ETFs to see if they contained crypto companies, nor were we able to verify the complete exposure of certain private companies or trusts that the senators may be exposed to.
We additionally didn’t count Tesla as a crypto company, despite it holding a small amount of bitcoin (BTC) and previously promising to accept BTC before deciding to end that program.
Nor did we consider exposure to any publicly listed banks to be exposure to crypto, even for banks that have announced or are reportedly considering issuing a stablecoin.
There have recently been renewed calls in the House of Representatives to ban stock trading by congresspeople and their families, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Raja Krishnamoorthi.
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