From February 7th, 2025
Dem Overseeing ‘Digital Assets’ to Hold Luxury Retreat With Crypto Kingpin
Freshman Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego was recently named the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee’s new subcommittee on “digital assets,” which will oversee cryptocurrencies. Next month, Gallego will hold a ritzy donor retreat alongside one of the crypto industry’s biggest cheerleaders and investors, Marc Andreessen.
(snip)
The invite suggests donations of $5,000 to attend the retreat, which is set to take place over three days at the luxury oasis L’Auberge de Sedona. (The cheapest accommodation available for out-of-state visitors that weekend, according to the resort’s website, is $1,809 per night, with a two-night minimum.) Donations will benefit Gallego’s leadership PAC, called Juntos PAC.
(snip)
A crypto industry Super PAC called Protect Progress spent $10 million boosting Gallego’s 2024 Senate campaign. Protect Progress and its parent organization, Fairshake, received $138 million last election cycle from Andreessen, co-founder Ben Horowitz, and their firm, which has invested in crypto for years and lobbies extensively on crypto issues.
“The crypto industry has very quickly become one of the major players in the campaign finance system, and crypto money has been deployed in very aggressive and strategic ways,” says Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer and deputy executive director at the watchdog group Documented. “Throughout the 2024 cycle, we saw crypto money deployed to take out crypto critics and support crypto backers, and this might be an indication of how crypto not only attacks its enemies, but also also rewards its friends.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/ruben-gallego-crypto-digital-assets-andreessen-yglesias-1235260013/
= new reply since forum marked as read