Six days before the midterms, $56 million in crypto PAC spending is the last number on the public record, because the filing system behind it just stopped working. That gap matters because the final stretch is when the heaviest ad money lands, and right now none of it can be filed on time.
Key points:
- The FEC's filing system has been down since Monday night, after hackers reportedly hit it, so the 24-hour spending reports just cannot go in.
- Since Sunday, the public filings show nothing new from Fairshake or the other big crypto PACs, right when last-minute ad money usually floods in.
- Ohio is where the money was loudest: Fairshake put $56 million into media in that Senate race, and the Winklevoss-backed Digital Freedom Fund added more than $7 million.
On Monday night, around 10 pm Eastern time, the filing system stopped working. The FEC later called it an electronic filing system outage and said its staff were working to get it back, and by Tuesday evening a status note said the problem had been found and a fix was on the way. Old reports can still be searched, but no new filings can go in while the system stays down. Reuters reported that an email pointed to a hacker or hackers behind the disruption.
Crypto groups have good reason to spend big right now. Congress failed to pass a crypto market structure bill in September, so Fairshake and others are backing candidates who voted for it, and these races will help decide who runs Congress next. In the last 20 days before an election, groups must report spending of $1,000 or more within 24 hours, and candidates must report big contributions within 48 hours. With six days to go, the filings instead show no new spending since Sunday from Fairshake, Defend American Jobs, Protect Progress, Fellowship, or the Digital Freedom Fund.
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My own read is this: do not mistake the quiet filings for quiet spending. The ads are almost certainly still running. Only the paperwork stopped, and that is exactly why the gap is worth watching.
What shows up when the system comes back?
When the system returns, expect a pile of late filings to land at once. The Ohio race will be the first place to look: Fairshake's $56 million in media against Sherrod Brown and for Jon Husted, plus more than $7 million from the Digital Freedom Fund in the same race, were already on record before the outage. On Sunday, the Digital Freedom Fund also reported more than $572,000 in text messages backing Republican Senate candidates, most of it for Ken Paxton's campaign in Texas. Protect Progress, meanwhile, last showed more than $50,000 for mail backing Representative Aisha Wahab in California's 14th district.
One thing the outage does not touch is the vote itself. The FEC tracks money, it does not run elections, so ballots and vote counts carry on as normal. Until the filing system is back, though, the public record stops on Sunday. The spending does not.
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— BitByLine News Desk
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Sources: Cointelegraph, Reuters