Trump PAC has raised about $7.5 million in crypto donations

A political action committee supporting former President Donald Trump has raised about $7.5 million in cryptocurrencies.

Contributors to the Trump 47 joint fundraising committee donated bitcoin, ether and XRP, as well as the U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins tether and USDC, to the GOP presidential nominee’s campaign, according to a Federal Election Commission filing submitted on Tuesday.

The PAC said the latest filing covered donations in the period of July 1 through Sept. 30, but numbers included cumulative contributions.

With the 2024 election just three weeks away and the contest in a virtual dead heat, according to polling averages, Trump is counting on a hefty dose of funding from the crypto community. The former president has positioned himself as the pro-crypto candidate in this election, a reversal from his previous stance during his time in the White House. In May, he became the first major presidential candidate to accept donations in digital tokens.

Nearly half of all the corporate money flowing into the election has come from the crypto industry, according to a recent report from the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen. The sum was raised from a mix of contributors, with Coinbase, Ripple, and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz accounting for most of those business donations. The industry has raised roughly 13 times the amount it brought in during the last presidential election year.

At least 18 donors gave more than $5.5 million in bitcoin to Trump 47, the filing shows. Another seven people gave around $1.5 million in ether.

Contributors hailed from more than 15 states, including a few battlegrounds, plus the American territory of Puerto Rico. Their professions include Lockheed Martin software engineer, Duthie Power Services sales engineer and a producer for Esperanza Entertainment.

David Bailey, CEO of media group BTC, gave more than $498,000 in bitcoin. Bailey was part of a small army of bitcoin fanatics who indoctrinated Trump in all things bitcoin and helped turned him from a skeptic to an evangelist. The process culminated in Trump headlining the biggest bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville, Tennessee, in July.

Trump said in his keynote that his campaign had raised $25 million from the crypto industry, though he didn’t specify the split between digital tokens and dollar donations.

Among the new donors is Chase Herro, one of the co-founders of the Trump family’s new crypto project World Liberty Financial. The platform, which has been described as a decentralized bank where customers will be encouraged to borrow, lend and invest in crypto, launched its token sale on Tuesday.

So far, more than $10.2 million worth of WLFI tokens have been sold, far short of the initial fundraise goal of $300 million. The launch was plagued with technical issues, including the repeated crashing of the website where the sale was taking place.

Mike Belshe, CEO of digital asset security company BitGo, has contributed almost $100,000 in bitcoin.

Brian Murray, a partner at Craft Ventures, gave $6,560 in bitcoin. Craft was founded by pro-Trump venture capitalist David Sacks.

Kresus Labs founder Trevor Traina gave more than $25,000 in ether, Chainstone Labs CEO Bruce Fenton donated $60,000 in bitcoin and Gary Cardone of Cardone Digital Ventures contributed over $840,000 in bitcoin.

Ripple legal chief Stuart Alderoty contributed $300,000 in XRP, as CNBC previously reported. Alderoty attended a Trump fundraising event hosted by Sacks in San Francisco in June.

Alderoty is at odds with Ripple’s billionaire co-founder Chris Larsen, who gave $1 million worth of XRP tokens to Future Forward, a super PAC that’s supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ run for the White House. Future Forward began accepting donations in crypto in September.

While Larsen shares the crypto industry’s criticism of SEC Chair Gary Gensler and the aggressive approach the Biden administration has taken toward companies in the space, the Ripple chairman said he has more confidence in Harris, in part because she’s from the Bay Area.

“She knows people who have grown up in the innovation economy her whole life,” Larsen told CNBC in an interview this week. “So I think she gets it at a fundamental level, in a way that I think the Biden folks were just not paying attention to, or maybe just didn’t make the connection between empowering workers and making sure you have American champions dominating their industries.”

In addition to Larsen, Uniswap legal chief Marvin Ammori gave money to the Harris Action Fund. Like Ripple, Uniswap is battling claims it violated U.S. securities laws.

On the pro-Trump side, billionaire twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have led the charge, with an aggregate contribution of nearly $1.1 million each. Some of that money was refunded in September because it exceeded the maximum allowed.