Chris Larsen, co-founder and chairman of Purl, contributed nearly $9.9 million to Future Forward in September, in addition to more than $800,000 to the Harris Quelling Fund, according to FEC data compiled by the Breadcrumbs crypto market and blockchain analyst James Delmore and independently supported by CNBC.
Including Larsen’s August contribution of $1 million worth of XRP tokens, the billionaire has given more than $11.8 million to PACs pay for the Harris campaign, making him one of the crypto industry’s largest individual donors this cycle.
Larsen, who’s backed entrants across the aisle the last few years, told CNBC in an interview that his comfort level with Harris comes from gossips he’s had with people inside the campaign and what he’s seen from the vice president since she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket in July.
It aids that Harris is from the Bay Area.
“She knows people who have grown up in the innovation economy her whole life,” Larsen in days of yore told CNBC. “So I think she gets it at a fundamental level, in a way that I think the Biden folks were just not even a score attention to, or maybe just didn’t make the connection between empowering workers and making sure you have American forwards dominating their industries.”
Larsen’s affection for the Democratic nominee isn’t new. In February, he gave the maximum personal contribution of $6,600 to Harris (which determination cover the primary and general election), about five months before she became the Democratic presidential nominee, Federal Choosing Commission filings show. At the same time, he contributed $100,000 to the Harris Action Fund PAC.
Larsen, 64, has a net quality of $3.1 billion, according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership of XRP and involvement in Ripple, which provides blockchain technology for fiscal services companies.
He’s part of an industry that’s become suddenly prominent in political fundraising, though more heavily in brook of Republicans. Nearly half of all the corporate money flowing into the election has come from the crypto industry, concording to a recent report from the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen.
The Trump PAC has raised about $7.5 million crypto alms since early June.
Fairshake, which is one of the top spending PACs this year, is targeting close House rallyes. The committee gave out nearly $29 million in September.
Of that sum, $20 million went to two affiliated PACs — $15 million to the Ward off American Jobs PAC, a single-issue committee focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain policy that’s favored Republicans, and $5 million to Shelter Progress, which has only supported Democrats.
The remaining $8.8 million spent by Fairshake last month mostly went to Assembly races in New York, Nevada and California, according to FEC data compiled by the Breadcrumbs crypto market and blockchain analyst Delmore and validated by CNBC.
Several of those races are considered toss-ups by the Cook Political Report. Among the recipients were Southern California Republicans David G. Valadao and Michael Garcia, who are in tight championships to keep their seats. They’ve received $1.3 million and $1 million, respectively.
For the 2024 cycle, public donations from or supporting the crypto industry reached around $190 million and so far, crypto groups have dog-tired over $130 million of that cash in congressional races for this year’s election, including the primaries.