What happened
Americans voted on Tuesday in midterm elections that will reset the balance of power in Washington, and the crypto industry showed up with its wallet open. Fairshake and its affiliated PACs, along with other industry-aligned groups, deployed roughly $176 million across House and Senate races this cycle, per Cointelegraph's Tuesday report. That figure makes crypto one of the single largest corporate political spenders of the 2026 cycle, trailing only a handful of legacy industries.
The money went mostly into primary races earlier in the year and into a tight set of general-election Senate contests where a few thousand votes decide which party holds the gavel. Polls close in waves starting at 6 p. m.
ET on the East Coast and run through 1 a. m. ET on the West Coast.
Why it matters
Congress is where crypto's legal status in the United States gets settled. Two live legislative tracks are waiting on the next session: a stablecoin framework that would give dollar-backed tokens a federal regulatory home, and a broader market structure bill that would carve out which assets the SEC regulates and which fall to the CFTC. Both have moved in committee but neither has cleared both chambers.
The composition of the next Congress decides whether these bills land on the president's desk in the first half of 2027 or get buried in committee for another two years. A friendlier Senate also matters for confirmations. Any new SEC or CFTC commissioners nominated over the next two years need to clear it, and the crypto industry has spent heavily to tilt the odds.