1. A Pivotal Election Cycle for Digital Asset Legislation
The November 2026 midterm elections are shaping up to be among the most consequential in recent memory for the cryptocurrency industry. Congressional Republicans — who have driven the current wave of pro-crypto legislation, including the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — are widely expected to lose ground in both chambers. Prediction market platform Kalshi currently places the probability of Democrats retaking the House majority at above 84%, while the Senate remains closer to a coin flip. For an industry that has staked enormous political capital on the Republican-controlled Congress of the past two years, that prospect carries significant implications. The window for advancing landmark crypto legislation before the composition of Congress changes may be narrowing faster than the industry had anticipated.
2. Stand With Crypto Enters the Midterm Arena
Against this backdrop, Stand With Crypto — the advocacy organisation founded by Coinbase in 2023 and now backed by firms including Kraken, Gemini, Anchorage Digital, and Paradigm — has launched its formal 2026 midterm election programme. The rollout, announced on Thursday, includes a new online voter hub, the first slate of candidate endorsements for the cycle, and the release of newly commissioned polling on crypto voters in battleground states. The organisation now claims approximately 2.7 million U.S. members, up from 2.6 million at the start of the year, following a 675,000-member increase in 2025 alone. Stand With Crypto has previously demonstrated its political effectiveness: its grading system for politicians and its capacity to mobilise members into letter-writing campaigns — over 925,000 emails sent to lawmakers in 2025 — have established it as one of the more operationally capable advocacy groups in Washington's digital asset space.
3. Six Endorsements, Eight Battleground Races
The inaugural endorsement slate backs six sitting congressional representatives across districts identified as highly competitive and crypto-relevant. The supported incumbents span both parties: Republican Zach Nunn of Iowa, Democrat Susie Lee of Nevada, Republican Mike Lawler of New York, Democrat Don Davis of North Carolina, Democrat Greg Landsman of Ohio, and Republican Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania. Beyond active endorsements, Stand With Crypto also named two races where it intends to oppose incumbent candidates based on their records on digital asset policy. Republican Scott Perry of Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District — who voted against the GENIUS Act in 2025 — and Democrat Marcy Kaptur of Ohio's 9th Congressional District have both been identified as incumbents with records the organisation considers harmful to crypto interests. The group indicated that additional race endorsements will follow throughout the cycle.
4. The Voter Hub and Candidate Scorecard System
Central to the 2026 strategy is a newly launched voter platform designed to serve as a real-time intelligence resource for crypto-minded voters in any congressional district across the country. The hub compiles dynamic scorecards for candidates based on their legislative voting histories, public statements, and responses to the Stand With Crypto candidate questionnaire, which was circulated to congressional hopefuls earlier in the year. Each candidate is assigned a favourability rating reflecting their overall stance on digital asset innovation. The platform represents an evolution of the scoring methodology deployed during the 2024 general election cycle and is designed to allow 2.7 million members to quickly assess where any given candidate stands before making voting decisions — regardless of whether their district is among the eight prioritised battlegrounds.
5. New Polling Paints a Nuanced Picture of Crypto Voters
Commissioned from Impact Research and conducted in February across battleground states, the organisation's new survey of 1,000 crypto owners offers several findings that are likely to shape how both parties approach digital asset policy ahead of November. The most striking result is the degree to which crypto-owning voters resist partisan categorisation: roughly 59% of crypto owners describe themselves as voters who do not always back the same party, and nearly half say they would support a candidate whose position on crypto they agreed with even if they disagreed with that candidate on other issues. These figures are consistent with earlier polling from McLaughlin & Associates, which found crypto investors identifying slightly more as Democrats on paper but expressing clear intent to vote Republican on the generic congressional ballot — a profile that defines a genuine swing constituency.
6. Republicans Lead But Hold No Lock on Crypto Voters
When asked which party they considered more supportive of the digital assets industry, crypto owners in battleground states favoured Republicans over Democrats by 45% to 26%, according to the Impact Research polling. That 19-point advantage reflects the Republican Party's more consistent legislative track record on crypto issues during the current Congress. However, the 26% who view Democrats as the more crypto-friendly party — and the significant undecided portion — indicates that the issue is far from locked for Republicans. Stand With Crypto's bipartisan endorsement slate, which includes three Democrats alongside three Republicans, is a deliberate reflection of this data. The organisation has explicitly framed its position as party-agnostic, betting that the composition of a pro-crypto Congress matters more than which party controls it.
7. Voter Motivation and Turnout Indicators
The survey's findings on voter motivation are particularly relevant given the historical tendency for digital asset advocates to be vocal online but inconsistent at the ballot box. Nearly 80% of crypto owners surveyed described themselves as almost certain to vote in the 2026 general election, and more than 75% characterised themselves as enthusiastic about participating. These self-reported turnout intentions, if even partially realised, would constitute a meaningful mobilisation for a constituency that the industry estimates at roughly 52 million Americans nationally. Stand With Crypto's get-out-the-vote operation — which will combine digital advertising, direct mail, targeted SMS outreach, and email campaigns — is designed to convert that stated enthusiasm into actual votes in the specific districts where the organisation believes the margin of difference is smallest.
8. The Legislative Stakes Behind the Electoral Strategy
The urgency behind Stand With Crypto's midterm mobilisation is directly tied to the volume of unfinished business on the crypto legislative agenda. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, if it clears the Senate Banking Committee and passes both chambers before November, would represent a historic achievement — but it would still leave significant legislative work undone. A dedicated crypto tax framework, clearer treatment of digital assets in retirement accounts, and the formal establishment of the U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve ordered by President Trump all remain without statutory resolution. If Democrats retake one or both chambers in November, the prioritisation of these remaining items becomes considerably less certain. Democratic lawmakers have been broadly more sceptical of deregulatory approaches and have raised persistent concerns about ethics provisions, DeFi oversight, and the absence of appointments to vacant seats at the CFTC and SEC.
9. Industry PAC Activity Reinforces the Push
Stand With Crypto's candidate-level activity is not the only financial vector through which the crypto industry is attempting to shape the 2026 elections. The Fairshake super PAC — funded by contributions from major crypto companies — has already spent approximately $8.6 million in early state primaries ahead of the November general elections. The pattern of industry PAC spending in 2026 has shifted compared to 2024, when contributions were spread more evenly across both parties. In the current cycle, the concentration of spending in support of Republican candidates reflects the industry's calculation about where its legislative interests are most likely to be advanced — though Stand With Crypto's explicitly bipartisan endorsement strategy complicates any simple narrative about the industry's political alignment.
10. A Narrowing Window and What Comes After
The timeline for the crypto industry's legislative ambitions is compressing in ways that were perhaps not fully anticipated at the start of 2026. The Senate calendar is constrained, and the combination of the Iran conflict, ongoing budget disputes, and Trump's stated conditions for signing legislation have added unpredictability to the floor schedule. Goldman Sachs noted in a January report that passage of key crypto legislation in the first half of 2026 would be especially significant given the risk that the midterms could delay further progress. If the Clarity Act does not clear before November, a new Congress — potentially with a different partisan balance — will determine whether and how quickly the remaining regulatory architecture for digital assets is constructed. Stand With Crypto's midterm programme is, at its core, an attempt to influence the composition of that Congress before the industry discovers what a less favourable one looks like.