Fairshake wins four primaries, loses Miami race after $2M ad blitz

Crypto super PAC Fairshake backed winners in four of five congressional primaries on Tuesday. The one race it lost was the one where it spent the most.

Oliver Gilbert took the Democratic primary in Florida's 24th district with 34.4% of the vote. He beat Shevrin Jones and Kendrick Meek after Protect Progress – Fairshake's Democratic-affiliated arm – dropped more than $2 million on attack ads.

Those ads used fake Miami Herald headlines that misrepresented Gilbert's positions. A PAC spokesperson said "the underlying facts in our ad are true." Gilbert did not mention crypto or the ad campaign in his Tuesday night victory speech. On Aug. 12, he said "Donald Trump's tech billionaire buddies" were behind "crypto con artists trying to buy a Democratic primary."

Fairshake channels its spending through two affiliated PACs. Protect Progress backs Democrats. Defend American Jobs backs Republicans. The two committees spent about $3.6 million on primaries in Alaska, Florida and Wyoming.

Defend American Jobs spent about $1.5 million to support three Republicans. Two won outright. Sydney Gruters won Florida's 16th district. Representative Harriet Hageman won the Wyoming Senate race. The third, Nick Begich in Alaska's at-large district, is expected to advance to the general election.

Protect Progress spent more than $150,000 on Democrat Lois Frankel, who won the primary in Florida's 23rd district. Those four candidates will likely face challengers in November.

The network reported a $193 million war chest as of January, largely from Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz. In the 2024 cycle, it spent more than $130 million to help elect friends and to defeat critics. As of June, it had already spent more than $82 million on 2026 races.

Federal records show Protect Progress reported $23.6 million in receipts for the 2025-2026 period, nearly all of it transferred in from affiliated committees. It reported $22.7 million in independent expenditures. The group spent about $5.5 million in June to help Maryland state delegate Adrian Boafo win the Democratic nomination in that state's 5th district.

Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter said the group is "just getting started building the largest pro-crypto Congress in history."

Congress is not in session until September. The Senate will then consider a cloture motion on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a bill meant to set comprehensive rules for digital assets. The House passed CLARITY by a bipartisan vote of 294-134 in July 2025. Senate Democrats have pushed for stronger ethics language related to the Trump family's crypto holdings.