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In the 2026 U.S. midterm elections, crypto industry political action committees spent over $176 million. Fairshake and its allies invested $154.5 million across 89 races. About $75 million went to Republicans, around $30 million to Democrats — it's clear where the money was spent. What they wanted to buy was simple: a crypto-friendly Congress. What did they actually get? The Democrats swept both the Senate and the House. 54 seats in the Senate, over 245 in the House. The biggest spender in the crypto industry lost the hardest battle. In Ohio, crypto PACs spent $64 million trying to get Republican Jon Husted into the Senate to block one of crypto’s sharpest critics, former Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown. Brown won. $64 million bought them the person they least wanted to see return. Washington analyst Jaret Seiberg of TD Cowen said: "We see Sherrod Brown winning in Ohio, which is damaging to the crypto industry’s political influence." The problem isn’t that there wasn’t enough money. The problem is the nature of the money. The crypto industry’s Washington strategy over the past two years was essentially a partisan bet: putting most chips on the Republican side, hoping to get an industry-friendly CLARITY Act. CLARITY stalled in the Senate in September, negotiations stuck on deadlocks over stablecoin incentives, investor protections, and banking competition. Now with Democrats retaking both chambers, Warren is likely to chair the Senate Banking Committee, and Waters may regain control of the House Financial Services Committee. What awaits the crypto industry next isn’t "regulatory divergence," but political reckoning. CNBC put it bluntly: the new Congress is more likely to focus on scrutinizing the Trump family’s crypto business than advancing legislation the industry wants. TD Cowen’s assessment is even more straightforward: CLARITY won’t move forward in the next two years. $176 million bought two years of legislative deadlock plus a supervisory hearing targeting themselves. But one thing the money did buy was not wrong. The Genius Act. This federal stablecoin framework bill passed with bipartisan support in 2025 and officially took effect on January 18. Its fundamental difference from CLARITY is that it is already law, not a bargaining chip. After Democrats took back Congress, repealing it would require new legislation; meanwhile, the SEC and CFTC can continue rulemaking under existing authority. In other words, during the two years CLARITY was stalled, stablecoins are the only legislative track with rails already laid. What the crypto industry really needs to do is not keep writing checks betting on the next election cycle, but put evidence on the table: prove stablecoin reserves are transparent, prove compliance and efficiency are not mutually exclusive, prove that tokenization’s settlement speed is not just a concept on a PowerPoint. In Washington, cash can’t buy loyalty. Only evidence can buy time. The industry spent $176 million to learn one thing: When you make yourself a partisan pawn, and the other party comes to power, you become the target of the reckoning. Money can buy seats, but not safety.