Last month, Rep. Al Green and fellow Rep. Christian Menefee faced off in a highly contested runoff to fill Texas’s 18th Congressional District seat. When Texas Republicans gerrymandered the state’s congressional maps last summer, Green saw the Houston-area district he served for two decades eliminated, and he shifted to the 18th, where Menefee had just been elected after the death of Rep. Sylvester Turner.
Nearly 40 years Green’s junior, Menefee ran on a platform not unlike his opponent’s, promising to advocate for racial and gender equality, affordability, and reforming the U.S. immigration system. But his stance on one issue diverged significantly from Green’s: cryptocurrency.
FairShake, one of the most influential crypto super PACs, poured over $4 million into ads benefiting Menefee’s campaign, through its Democratic-aligned affiliate Protect Progress. In 2024, Protect Progress spent over $33 million to support the campaigns of 23 Democrats. Only two lost. FairShake has a Republican arm too, known as Defend American Jobs. Overall, it shelled out around $40 million last cycle, and in 2026 it has around $130 million to spend, coming from tech giants like Andreessen Horowitz, and companies such as Coinbase and Ripple.
On his campaign website, Menefee signaled his support for crypto, saying: “Technologies like blockchain offer the potential to increase trust, transparency, and efficiency—from finance to supply chains.” Stand With Crypto, an industry group that rates congressmembers based on their support of hands-off federal regulation of the currency, has given Menefee an “A” rating. Green has an “F.”
Protect Progress did more than just directly support Menefee’s campaign; the group also funneled $1.5 million into attack ads against Green. During his career, Green did not shy away from criticizing the crypto industry and its influence. In fact, he tried to use Menefee’s crypto support against him. In a May floor speech, just before the runoff election for Texas’s 18th District, Green began, “I rise as an unbought, liberated, and unafraid Democrat. I am unbought by crypto cash, unbought by the millions of dollars that the crypto industry spends to elect people to Congress so that they can have influence over legislation, and unbossed by the cryptocrats.”
Green went on: “The cryptocrats, if they had their way, would own every member of Congress, but there are some who resist. I am a part of the resistance … I assure you that I am going to remain the architect of some portion of this resistance as long as I am in Congress.”
Two weeks later, Menefee prevailed with nearly 69 percent of the vote.
MENEFEE HAS JOINED A GROWING CLUB of young Black politicians whose congressional races were heavily influenced by money from the crypto industry in the past few years. Also in Texas, Jasmine Crockett’s 2022 win was supported by $2 million in donations from crypto PACs. The same can be said for several other Black candidates who represent districts with significant Black populations, such as Shontel Brown (OH-11), Lucy McBath (GA-6), and Jonathan Jackson (IL-01). Each congressperson received a million or more dollars from PACs affiliated with the crypto industry.
In open-seat races in heavily Black districts, more often than not, the candidate with the most crypto money tends to win. This has created a divide, with new members coming to Congress with crypto backing, while older Black politicians harbor some skepticism toward the industry.
Research has shown that Black candidates on average raise less money than their peers, with a 2022 analysis showing that the average Black legislator raised $2 million compared to the average House member’s $2.7 million. Issues such as a lack of access to social networks and wealthy individuals create barriers to the ability of Black candidates to win congressional races. Women of color in particular tend to rely on small donations, and have raised less on average compared to all other candidates, particularly their white male counterparts. Additionally, the racial wealth gap, which is a by-product of both systemic and structural racism, heavily affects the success of Black candidates’ fundraising efforts.
Crypto is marketed to Black candidates, and consequently, their Black constituents, as a method of overcoming historical anti-Black marginalization from the nation’s financial systems. Money from the crypto industry has undoubtedly bolstered young Black politicians’ chances of being elected, which on the surface indicates that similar benefits can also be seen by the average person if they choose to invest in such networks. Indeed, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation itself has focused on promoting crypto’s potential for closing the racial wealth gap, but has also stated that the risks are high without adequate guardrails.
Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) have signaled that they support deregulation. Most recently, this was reflected in the passage of the GENIUS Act, which was supposed to create a regulatory framework for stablecoins. Critics have argued that the law will provide inadequate and lax governmental oversight of the crypto industry, which in turn will have an adverse effect on already vulnerable populations who have invested in the coin.
Out of the CBC’s 54 members, 19 voted in favor of the GENIUS Act. Most were elected in the past decade, reflecting how legislative attitudes toward crypto are influenced by a generational divide.
FINANCIAL SYSTEMS IN THE U.S. have long discriminated against Black people. In the 19th century, when banking services started becoming more popular and reliable, most Black people in the South were still enslaved, while those in the North were forced to navigate racist institutions. In 1865, during the Emancipation period, the Freedman’s Savings Bank was established by Congress to collect and save the money of Black people, many of whom were formerly enslaved. It held millions of dollars at its peak.
Less than a decade later, the bank collapsed due to callous mismanagement and fraud at the hands of its white trustees. Once the 1873 financial panic hit the country, the majority of the Freedman’s Bank’s investments became useless. Black depositors lost nearly $3 million in savings, only about half of which was repaid by the government after years of petitioning.
The Freedman’s Savings Bank’s demise was followed by further exclusion of Black people from fairly benefiting from using banks and the services provided. Redlining, predatory loans, and continued exclusion from mainstream banking have continued to hinder efforts to close the racial wealth gap.
In 2024, the Federal Reserve reported that 6 percent of U.S. adults were “unbanked,” meaning that they did not have a checking or savings account. Black (13 percent) and Latino (12 percent) people had much higher levels of being unbanked compared to white people. Instead of relying on traditional financial services, many unbanked individuals use non-bank check-cashing or money order services instead.
Black people are also more likely to be “underbanked,” which refers to the status of having a savings or checking account, but mostly opting to use alternative financial services. Research in 2023 showed that 27 percent of Black people were underbanked compared to the rate overall, which was 16 percent.
Mistrust rooted in historical injustice and access to banking services is a key driver of these statistics. Crypto has been peddled as a safe, approachable method for minority communities looking to build wealth outside of the traditional banking system, not just by key players in the industry, but also by Black politicians.
Similar to Menefee’s campaign, Protect Progress spent over $4 million to secure a win for Jasmine Clark in the Democratic primary for Georgia’s 13th Congressional District in May, which was vacated after the death of Rep. David Scott. Clark has been given an “A” rating by Stand With Crypto, and posted on X prior to the primary election that Congress “should remember that digital assets are the future and provide long-overdue financial tools for unbanked communities.” If elected to Congress in November, which is likely in her heavily Black district, Clark is positioned to join the expanding number of Black congresspeople who will stand by the passage of pro-crypto regulation.
But crypto isn’t exactly an ideal avenue to ensure financial inclusion for Black Americans.
“Crypto’s appeal is understandable because many Black households have faced exclusion, discrimination in the traditional financial space, but crypto does not solve those underlying issues,” says Cantrell Dumas, senior researcher for financial regulation and policy at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “Crypto is extremely volatile and speculative, and it matters because Black households on average have less inherited wealth, fewer liquid savings, and less margin to absorb those losses. A risky asset like crypto or Bitcoin can deepen that inequality.”
Instead of acting to minimize those possible risks, the Trump administration has been rolling back efforts of previous administrations to oversee those institutions. Financial inclusion programs have become a casualty in the administration’s efforts to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the government’s proceedings.
For example, the Treasury Department has made moves to eliminate the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, an initiative which funded small institutions that served low-income and communities of color in an effort to combat discrimination in the financial system.
Since President Trump reassumed office last year, the federal government has been hurtling toward achieving its goal of making the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world.” Deregulation has been a priority of Trump and his allies, who stand to profit, and have been seeing lucrative investments in crypto. Trump himself, of course, has his own meme coin, and recent reporting has uncovered that the Trump family has made over $2 billion in crypto ventures since he started his second term.
“The issue we have right now is just this administration is so cynical, and it’s like everyone is trying to grab as much as they can while they’re in power,” says Graham Steele, who was the assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department during the Biden presidency. “It takes all of those underlying issues and kind of turbocharges all of that, and it’s like every industry is getting its way all the time now, and really just trying to grab as much as they can, while they can.”
That is bolstered by crypto’s massive spending in elections, particularly in Black districts. This enables them to get bipartisan buy-in for legislation that benefits the industry.
Despite Trump’s self-involved crypto craze, the jury is still out on whether Americans trust the crypto industry. Polling in 2024 showed that 63 percent of U.S. adults have little to no confidence in investing in, trading, or using crypto. Twenty percent of Black men under the age of 50 reported using crypto at the time. Two years later, the numbers of people who use crypto (1 in 5 adults) have stayed mostly the same, except for a 6 percent increase in usage by Republicans since 2021.
Dumas is curious to know whether the booming interest in crypto that began in the mid-2010s is still the reality in Black communities. “I’ve seen in the past that to appeal to the Black consumer and point out the discrimination they have faced, crypto is shown as a way to build wealth, and basically fight the system.” But now things seem more cloudy, especially as general interest in investing in crypto has become stagnant. “I don’t see so much of that urgency now,” he says.
Black politicians hyping crypto and enabling Trump administration deregulation could have harmful impacts in their communities. Instances of predatory inclusion—a term for when historically excluded groups like Black Americans are finally able to access financial services but only under exploitative conditions—have the potential to bloom.
In disarming the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Trump has effectively made unbanked and underbanked populations much more vulnerable. “Under this current administration none of those agencies are interested in bringing any cases against these companies for offering an unregistered security or offering a consumer financial product without disclosing the terms and charging unfair fees or interest or additional charges,” says Steele.
“There are people and populations who will get marketed these products and services, they will get taken advantage of, they will lose a lot of their wealth and income, and then there will be no agency there to help them get relief or be made whole,” he reflects.
CONGRESS COULD PASS LEGISLATION that protects the interests of Black investors in crypto, but the future looks bleak. Up next on the Senate floor is the CLARITY Act, which has been promoted by the crypto industry as the ideal path toward regulation. But the bill is flawed; its ethics, surveillance, and consumer protection provisions are shaky at best. Among other things, it would move primary jurisdiction over the industry to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a light-touch agency that currently only has one individual, a crypto supporter, on its five-person panel.
The CLARITY Act could see significant support from Black politicians, but crypto investment doesn’t always lead to that. For example, Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost saw significant funding from crypto to get elected but voted against CLARITY and the GENIUS Act in the House.
PACs like FairShake, however, are still infusing millions of dollars into races, and stand to come out on top, as long as the candidates they back make it into office and maintain their pro-crypto leanings.
Regardless, genuine federal efforts to forge paths for Black Americans to use and benefit from financial institutions are actively at risk as the Trump administration works to dismantle programs that aim to remedy the racial wealth gap. These issues get less attention because there isn’t a multimillion-dollar super PAC attached to them.
“Crypto cannot be used to substitute high wages for Black people, home ownership, retirement security, and provide access to affordable credit or provide strong consumer protections,” Dumas contends. “These are the things that I think would be more helpful in increasing Black wealth, as opposed to a single magic pill that crypto is trying to promise.”
