9 ms·

Molly White’s latest project, tracking political contributions of the cryptocurrency industry. White’s data shows these PACs dwarf even much larger industries i

by neilk 2y ago

Molly White’s latest project, tracking political contributions of the cryptocurrency industry. White’s data shows these PACs dwarf even much larger industries in this political cycle.

verdverm 2y ago
I had a back and forth with Molly on Bluesky about this and the source of the data https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.bsky.social/post/3kvjythgh3y2v https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.bsky.social/post/3kvjythgh... There is a lot of nuance to the data and the context, so "dwarf" is probably not the best term, especially in a more general PAC context https://www.fec.gov/data/committees/pac-party/?cycle=2024 https://www.fec.gov/data/committees/pac-party/?cycle=2024
- neilk 2y ago
  “Dwarf” was my word, not hers. Even so, if you click through she has another page that lists hybrid PACs. I have no idea if even that is the full picture; US politics are complicated. The project is open source so perhaps you can submit a PR to make it better.
  - molly0x57 2y ago
    (Molly here.) I added the “All PACs” page largely thanks to that Bluesky conversation with verdverm (thank you!) The “all PACs” page is the full picture. It’s showing the same data that verdverm linked over at the FEC, which places Fairshake at #9 out of any kind of committee. Arguably ActBlue and WinRed shouldn’t really be listed there, since they are fundraising platforms that serve as an intermediary.
    - verdverm 2y ago
      It was an informative discussion and a nice instance of constructive discourse of a political topic on social media. I learned some things too!
      - virtuous_sloth 2y ago
        I've found that it requires self-discipline on both parties making an effort to break the pattern-matching/automatic-thinking to emotional pipeline that is so easy to fall into. Kudos to both of you for having that.
roenxi 2y ago
> White’s data shows these PACs dwarf even much larger industries in this political cycle. How does it show that? It suggests there was 200 million raised for the 2024 election, but that doesn't seem to be in comparison to anything. The US government borrowing alone is multiple trillions per year; people would be expected to spend way more than a few hundred million to influence it. Presidential campaigns alone can run into a billion dollars.
- qqqult 2y ago
  Here's a breakdown by industry for 2024: Finance largest at $50mm, healthcare at $30mm, agriculture at $20mm. I'm not familiar enough with the details to claim that the numbers in OP take the #1 spot but they're definitely in the top 3 and that's very significant as we've seen with the recent change of tone from parties
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Where are you getting these numbers from? I was looking at https://www.opensecrets.org/industries https://www.opensecrets.org/industries because this site inspired me, it suggest finance/insurance/real estate spent $1,249,076,508 so far in the 2024 election cycle which seems a lot more plausible than $50 million. The risk-reward here suggests industries should be pumping billions into elections. The payoffs for regulatory capture are huge and the crypto people are novices compared to anyone else in finance.
    - qqqult 2y ago
      forgot to include the link, I was looking at PAC donations by industry on the same website: https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/industry-breakdown/2024 https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs... I agree with you on the risk/reward of buying influence through donations
      - roenxi 2y ago
        OpenSecrets doesn't make it as easy as it could to analyse all this, but I suspect what that is really telling us is that most of the money doesn't enter the race through PACs. Super PACs [0] seem to be different [1] and bring in about 2x as much money. So I don't think the industry PACs are giving a clear an impression of where money is coming from. My guess is the crypto community isn't outstanding in terms of spend as much as being naive about how to get the money to politicians in a way that gets them the regulation they want. And the players in this game might put some effort into subtlety. [0] https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs [1] The Make America Great Again Super PAC is ~80 million but the largest on the PAC list is American Crystal Sugar at ~$2 million.
mike_d 2y ago
The fact that it is a Molly White project means take it with a basketball sized grain of salt. She has deeply held beliefs and keeps cherry picking until the data supports them. I'm not sure the data supports crypto spending more than other industries in lobbying, I think they are just doing it via a single PAC rather than spinning up dozens of targeted PACs for each race.
- sph 2y ago
  Yes, this and her previous projects have started to look more of a crusade to me, than a critique of "cryptocurrency", whatever that is, bundling them all together rather than analysing the merits and faults of each. Mind you, given the deep bias HN has against cryptocurrencies of any shape or form, I feel here she has her ideal audience here and we're the ones swimming against the current.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
    Where is the "crusade"? This just shows political donations. Is the FEC engaging in a "crusade" by publishing details on PACs? There are constantly HN commenters on a crusade to extol and defend the alleged virtues of various "crypto" projects. We could accuse these folks of having a "bias against government-backed currency". Perhaps HN has a bias _for_ true stories of fraud, corruption and crime rather than a bias _against_ all crypto projects.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - yieldcrv 2y ago
      Perhaps. HN also has stories of random software libraries and deep discussions of those. Whenever a mismanaged business in other sectors is discussed its only about that business, not the entire sector that business operates in. Whenever a devastating hack occurs directly on an end user, its a discussion of the browser and tools that can be improved to thwart it. Crypto sector has many libraries that power it too with extremely active discussions in other tech forums, and thats totally missing from HN in favor of discussion of random mismanaged businesses and phishing attacks as representative of the entire concept of crypto. When that’s further from reality, as the tooling has improved a lot and is constantly evolving. There are many best practices that are actively discussed and worked on, elsewhere. While the crowd on HN peculiarly acts completely segregated from that with a blissful ignorance filled with glee over frauds in the crypto sector, an extremely strange and impossibly different standard then how everything else is discussed.

by neilk 2y ago

Molly White’s latest project, tracking political contributions of the cryptocurrency industry. White’s data shows these PACs dwarf even much larger industries in this political cycle.

verdverm 2y ago

I had a back and forth with Molly on Bluesky about this and the source of the data https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.bsky.social/post/3kvjythgh3y2v https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.bsky.social/post/3kvjythgh... There is a lot of nuance to the data and the context, so "dwarf" is probably not the best term, especially in a more general PAC context https://www.fec.gov/data/committees/pac-party/?cycle=2024 https://www.fec.gov/data/committees/pac-party/?cycle=2024

neilk 2y ago
“Dwarf” was my word, not hers. Even so, if you click through she has another page that lists hybrid PACs. I have no idea if even that is the full picture; US politics are complicated. The project is open source so perhaps you can submit a PR to make it better.
- molly0x57 2y ago
  (Molly here.) I added the “All PACs” page largely thanks to that Bluesky conversation with verdverm (thank you!) The “all PACs” page is the full picture. It’s showing the same data that verdverm linked over at the FEC, which places Fairshake at #9 out of any kind of committee. Arguably ActBlue and WinRed shouldn’t really be listed there, since they are fundraising platforms that serve as an intermediary.
  - verdverm 2y ago
    It was an informative discussion and a nice instance of constructive discourse of a political topic on social media. I learned some things too!
    - virtuous_sloth 2y ago
      I've found that it requires self-discipline on both parties making an effort to break the pattern-matching/automatic-thinking to emotional pipeline that is so easy to fall into. Kudos to both of you for having that.

roenxi 2y ago

> White’s data shows these PACs dwarf even much larger industries in this political cycle. How does it show that? It suggests there was 200 million raised for the 2024 election, but that doesn't seem to be in comparison to anything. The US government borrowing alone is multiple trillions per year; people would be expected to spend way more than a few hundred million to influence it. Presidential campaigns alone can run into a billion dollars.

qqqult 2y ago
Here's a breakdown by industry for 2024: Finance largest at $50mm, healthcare at $30mm, agriculture at $20mm. I'm not familiar enough with the details to claim that the numbers in OP take the #1 spot but they're definitely in the top 3 and that's very significant as we've seen with the recent change of tone from parties
- roenxi 2y ago
  Where are you getting these numbers from? I was looking at https://www.opensecrets.org/industries https://www.opensecrets.org/industries because this site inspired me, it suggest finance/insurance/real estate spent $1,249,076,508 so far in the 2024 election cycle which seems a lot more plausible than $50 million. The risk-reward here suggests industries should be pumping billions into elections. The payoffs for regulatory capture are huge and the crypto people are novices compared to anyone else in finance.
  - qqqult 2y ago
    forgot to include the link, I was looking at PAC donations by industry on the same website: https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/industry-breakdown/2024 https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs... I agree with you on the risk/reward of buying influence through donations
    - roenxi 2y ago
      OpenSecrets doesn't make it as easy as it could to analyse all this, but I suspect what that is really telling us is that most of the money doesn't enter the race through PACs. Super PACs [0] seem to be different [1] and bring in about 2x as much money. So I don't think the industry PACs are giving a clear an impression of where money is coming from. My guess is the crypto community isn't outstanding in terms of spend as much as being naive about how to get the money to politicians in a way that gets them the regulation they want. And the players in this game might put some effort into subtlety. [0] https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs [1] The Make America Great Again Super PAC is ~80 million but the largest on the PAC list is American Crystal Sugar at ~$2 million.

mike_d 2y ago

The fact that it is a Molly White project means take it with a basketball sized grain of salt. She has deeply held beliefs and keeps cherry picking until the data supports them. I'm not sure the data supports crypto spending more than other industries in lobbying, I think they are just doing it via a single PAC rather than spinning up dozens of targeted PACs for each race.

sph 2y ago
Yes, this and her previous projects have started to look more of a crusade to me, than a critique of "cryptocurrency", whatever that is, bundling them all together rather than analysing the merits and faults of each. Mind you, given the deep bias HN has against cryptocurrencies of any shape or form, I feel here she has her ideal audience here and we're the ones swimming against the current.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
  Where is the "crusade"? This just shows political donations. Is the FEC engaging in a "crusade" by publishing details on PACs? There are constantly HN commenters on a crusade to extol and defend the alleged virtues of various "crypto" projects. We could accuse these folks of having a "bias against government-backed currency". Perhaps HN has a bias _for_ true stories of fraud, corruption and crime rather than a bias _against_ all crypto projects.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    Perhaps. HN also has stories of random software libraries and deep discussions of those. Whenever a mismanaged business in other sectors is discussed its only about that business, not the entire sector that business operates in. Whenever a devastating hack occurs directly on an end user, its a discussion of the browser and tools that can be improved to thwart it. Crypto sector has many libraries that power it too with extremely active discussions in other tech forums, and thats totally missing from HN in favor of discussion of random mismanaged businesses and phishing attacks as representative of the entire concept of crypto. When that’s further from reality, as the tooling has improved a lot and is constantly evolving. There are many best practices that are actively discussed and worked on, elsewhere. While the crowd on HN peculiarly acts completely segregated from that with a blissful ignorance filled with glee over frauds in the crypto sector, an extremely strange and impossibly different standard then how everything else is discussed.