A new pro-crypto political action committee (PAC) is wielding a nine-figure wallet, so it’s probably no surprise that America’s regulators keep finding new ways of making nice with digital asset companies.
On September 15, The Fellowship PAC introduced itself to America’s politicians with a tweet promoting a “$100M+” bankroll to support “pro-innovation, pro-crypto candidates who will safeguard America’s role as the global leader in digital assets and entrepreneurship.”
A one-page fact sheet claimed that “[u]nlike past political efforts, the Fellowship PAC’s mission is defined by transparency and trust, ensuring political action directly supports the broader ecosystem rather than narrow or individual interests.”
Fellowship says it “does not coordinate with candidates or parties,” but this group promoting ‘transparency’ has so far offered zero information on who provided them with that $100M+ and who decides how it’s deployed. The announcement was accompanied by the launch of a threadbare website, which features only a ‘send a message’ option, with no indication to whom these messages are sent.
Fellowship’s ‘$100M+’ rivals the $140 million war chest that the original crypto PAC (Fairshake) claims to have raised ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Fairshake’s primary contributors include the Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) digital asset exchange, XRP-issuer Ripple Labs, and the Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) (NASDAQ: ZADIHX) venture capital group, but none of them have copped to contributing to Fellowship’s coffers.
Fellowship’s August 7 filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) lists the PAC’s treasurer as Mitchell Nobel, director of digital asset strategy and policy at Wall Street financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald (NASDAQ: ZCFITX). The New York Times reported that Fellowship’s contributors “are expected to include” Tether, issuer of the market-leading USDT stablecoin, the fiat reserves of which are allegedly custodied by Cantor Fitzgerald.
The Fellowship mission statement’s suggestion that other crypto PACs serve “narrow or individual interests” could be a thinly veiled shot at Tether’s main rival Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL), issuer of the USDC stablecoin that enjoys the same kind of advantage stateside that USDT enjoys outside America. Fairshake supporter Coinbase is closely aligned with Circle and relies on USDC-related products for much of its revenue.
On September 12, Tether announced the “planned” launch at some unspecified date of USAT, the company’s long-awaited “U.S.-regulated dollar-backed stablecoin.” USAT is intended to allow USDT to continue to serve as the dominant stablecoin beyond America’s borders, free from U.S. regulatory constraints, leaving USAT to comply with the recently approved GENIUS Act’s stablecoin rules.
Tether also announced that Bo Hines, the former executive director of the White House’s Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, will serve as USAT’s “future Chief Executive Officer.” Hines stepped down from the Council in August and was promptly hired as Tether’s ‘U.S. strategy advisor.’
SEC v Gemini resolution at hand
Fairshake views itself as a nonpartisan supporter of any politician who will cast pro-crypto votes. A far more partisan PAC, the Digital Freedom Fund (DFF), launched last month with the goal of helping to “realize President Trump’s vision of making America the crypto capital of the world.”
DFF was founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the brothers behind the Gemini (NASDAQ: GEMI) exchange. The Winklevii, who contributed $5 million to Fairshake during the 2024 election cycle, funded DFF with an initial donation of $21 million. Given DFF’s highly public debut, it seems unlikely that the twins would contribute to another fund without taking a victory lap.
That said, Fellowship’s arrival came hot on the heels of Gemini’s initial public offering on the Nasdaq on September 12. Opening at $37.01, Gemini shares soared to $45 but quickly surrendered most of those gains, and the shares closed Tuesday down another 13.5% to $28.13. Regardless, the IPO raised $425 million, so the Winklevii are flush with cash, which they could have contributed to this new mystery PAC.
Gemini recently got more good news, as it’s reportedly close to reaching a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the unregistered securities complaint filed against the company in 2023.
On September 15, the SEC and Gemini informed the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that they’d “reached a resolution in principle that would completely resolve this litigation, subject to review and approval” by the SEC. The parties asked to be given until December 15 to finalize their paperwork before the next joint status report.
The complaint centered on the Gemini Earn digital asset lending program, which found itself in serious trouble following the 2022 collapse of Digital Currency Group’s Genesis Global Capital subsidiary, to which Gemini had loaned much of its Earn customers’ assets.
In February, Cameron Winklevoss announced that the SEC had concluded its Gemini probe and “did not intend to recommend an enforcement action” against the company. The announcement came one month after former SEC Chair Gary Gensler stepped down from the role.
Cameron also said at the time that the SEC merely dropping its charges would be insufficient to atone for Gemini having suffered “tens of millions of dollars in legal bills alone and hundreds of millions in lost productivity, creativity, and innovation.” It’s unclear whether the ongoing negotiations might center on Gemini’s pursuit of some kind of financial redress from the SEC.
Last week, Brian Quintenz, Trump’s nominee to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), released private text messages between himself and Tyler Winklevoss. Quintenz appeared to suggest that Tyler was seeking assurance from Quintenz that Gemini was owed compensation for the $5 million the company paid the CFTC in January and other legal expenses.
That $5 million was a way to resolve charges the CFTC brought against Gemini in 2022 for “making false or misleading statements” regarding their 2017 plans to launch a BTC-based exchange-traded fund (ETF). In his messages to Quintenz, Tyler mentioned the CFTC’s need to “make amends” for the “lawfare” under the CFTC’s previous leadership. Tyler also sought “[c]ultural reform, which includes rectifying what happened to [Gemini].”
Quintenz’s nomination for the CFTC chairman’s role has been in limbo for some months now, partly due to the Winklevii’s efforts to convince Trump that Quintenz was “not in line’ with the president’s goals and policies.
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SEC to warn crypto firms ahead of enforcement
Meanwhile, SEC Chair Paul Atkins has continued his laissez-faire approach to all things crypto, telling the Financial Times that, while the SEC will go hard after serious crooks, there are “other gradations of that where you have to give people notice.”
Atkins said his predecessor Gensler’s approach had created “a market perception that … there was a lack of due process, a lack of notice, a lack of rule of law.” Going forward, Atkins said the approach would be more like “school days, the teacher flapping the ruler on the table, saying ‘class, you’re out of order … you have six months to clear this up.’”
Atkins suggested that this approach might have prevented a situation like the FTX exchange, which collapsed in spectacular fashion in November 2022 following the exposure of the massive financial fraud behind its success.
Atkins noted that customers of FTX’s U.S.-regulated offshoot fared better than customers of FTX’s Bahamas-based dot-com mothership, calling it “a really powerful example of how a good regulatory scheme can help to protect investors while something else offshore is not going to be adequate.”
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Capitol Hill hosts crypto roundtables
In a separate interview with Politico, Atkins praised Trump’s efforts to set up a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile. Atkins said the government “has seized a lot of Bitcoin and other things. … I think it’s smart not to dump it on the market, frankly, and so I salute the efforts of the president and the Treasury Secretary [Scott Bessent] and others to address that issue.”
The problem is that there’s been scant progress on establishing either the Reserve or the Stockpile, leading some in Congress to propose legislation that would force Bessent to keep Congress informed on what—if anything—is going on.
In March, the BITCOIN Act of 2025 was introduced in the U.S. Senate by longtime crypto booster Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). The Act would compel the federal government to buy 200,000 BTC tokens per year for five consecutive years and not sell any tokens for at least 20 years. Lummis proposed paying for these purchases by issuing new gold certificates that revalue the physical gold held in Fort Knox to its fair market value (so basically printing more paper money).
On September 16, Lummis and Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK)—who introduced the Act in the House of Representatives—held a roundtable discussion with 18 crypto execs to discuss ways of advancing the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. The event was dubbed part of ‘Bitcoin Advocacy Day,’ and also featured other members of the House and Senate.
On hand were Michael Saylor, founder of leading BTC ‘treasury’ firm Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) (NASDAQ: MSTR); Fred Thiel, CEO of block reward mining outfit (and #2 BTC treasury holder) MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA); and Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies (NASDAQ: BMNR), the largest holder of the Ethereum network’s native token ETH.
Thiel and Lee are inaugural members of The Digital Chamber advocacy group’s new Treasury Council, a 12-member panel that also includes Strategy CEO Phong Le, as well as execs from five other mining firms that have launched BTC treasuries, plus a few others. The Council’s goal is “advancing crypto’s role in corporate treasury strategy, macro policy, and global finance.”
A different Capitol Hill roundtable the same day was hosted by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) and attracted the likes of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen, and Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) senior VP Brian Morgenstern. Also attending were White House and Treasury officials, plus Rep. French Hill (R-AR), chief architect of the House’s digital asset market structure legislation (CLARITY Act).
The House approved CLARITY in July, and Emmer tweeted Tuesday that the roundtable attendees had a shared goal: “we must get the CLARITY Act to [Trump’s] desk ASAP.” The thing is, the Senate recently debuted its own market structure legislation, the Responsible Financial Innovation Act of 2025, and not everyone in the Senate believes approving the RFIA will be as smooth and easy as the crypto sector would prefer.
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Trump v Times
Speaking of Trump, the president filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times on Monday, seeking $15 billion (not a typo) in damages for serving as “a leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump.” Also named as defendants are several Times writers and their “malicious, defamatory, and disparaging book” on the president.
We won’t delve too deep into the suit’s hyperbolic claims, which are interspersed with passages celebrating Trump’s “decades of magnificent real estate achievements,” his re-election having signified “the greatest personal and political achievement in American history” and his “sui generis charisma and unique business acumen.”
Instead, we’ll note that among the president’s accomplishments allegedly defamed by the Times, there are two mentions of “the $TRUMP crypto project.” This refers to the $TRUMP memecoin issued by the president a few days before he took the oath of office for the second time this January.
Interestingly, Trump’s suit was filed the same day that the Times released a lengthy report into another Trump-linked crypto venture, World Liberty Financial (WLF), the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that issued both a governance token (WLFI) that began public trading on September 1, and a stablecoin (USD1) that launched this spring.
In April, USD1’s market cap rose by $2 billion following an investment by MGX, a United Arab Emirates (UAE) state-run investment firm, in the Binance exchange. For whatever reason, MGX chose to pay Binance not in cash but in USD1, leading to crypto critics like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) warning that the deal smelled like “corruption.”
So long as the USD1 isn’t redeemed for cash, WLF earns interest on the U.S. Treasury bills backing the stablecoins. The interest on $2 billion worth of T-bills means tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue for WLF, of which Trump claims a major chunk.
The Times report focused on the White House’s much-publicized deal giving the UAE access to sensitive American microchip technology via G42, a UAE-based AI technology firm. The deal reportedly came after a recommendation from Steve Witkoff, a close friend/ally of the president and “co-founder emeritus” of WLF (his sons Zach and Alex are active WLF co-founders).
Another party involved in the UAE chip negotiations was David Sacks, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who serves as the White House’s ‘AI & Crypto Czar.’ Also involved was Fiacc Larkin, a UAE-based executive who serves as both G42’s head of crypto and as WLF’s ‘chief strategic adviser.’
The web that the Times weaves is indeed tangled, but the gist is that the two deals—MGX buying $2 billion worth of USD1, and the White House allowing the chip sales to the UAE—”blurred the lines between personal and government business and raised questions about whether U.S. interests were served.”
While the two deals happened within weeks of each other, the Times acknowledged its lack of evidence showing “that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other.”
The Times also reported that despite WLF announcing on May 23 that the elder’ emeritus’ Witkoff was fully divesting from the company, an executive branch financial disclosure report dated August 13 notes that Witkoff still holds an unspecified financial stake in WLF. A White House spokesperson told the Times that Witkoff was “still in the process of divesting.”
Asked about the report during a Tuesday interview with CNBC, Trump’s son Eric initially deflected, saying his family is “far from [President Joe Biden’s son] Hunter Biden … the guy’s out there selling finger art.” Eric then made the rather bold claim that his father is “the first guy who hasn’t made money off of the presidency … Crypto came out of a necessity that we were debanked by everybody and needed to find a new way.”
Following the Times report, Sen. Warren tweeted that Trump was “cashing in on foreign crypto deals—and weakening guardrails that protect our advanced technology. We should not pass any crypto legislation without shutting this down.”
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Long Voyage(r) to something resembling justice
Finally, the CFTC has obtained a court order compelling Stephen Ehrlich, former CEO of defunct digital asset lender Voyager Digital, to pay $750,000 to his former customers via the company’s bankruptcy liquidation process.
Voyager filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2022 as the contagion from the onset of that year’s ‘crypto winter’ spread. Voyager customers are believed to have lost over $1 billion following the company’s implosion.
In October 2023, the CFTC and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed separate charges against Ehrlich, including fraud and falsely claiming that Voyager deposits were protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In June, Ehrlich agreed to pay $2.8 million to resolve the FTC charges.
Ehrlich, who neither admitted to nor denied the CFTC’s charges, has also been permanently enjoined from violating CFTC anti-fraud rules and faces a three-year ban on managing or advising the trading for or on behalf of any third parties.
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Watch: Teranode is the digital backbone of Bitcoin
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Source: https://coingeek.com/pro-crypto-pac-tether-ties-bitcoin-advocacy-hits-capitol-hill/