Forbes Digital Assets contributor Tonya M. Evans wrote on June 18 that political spending from the cryptocurrency industry is already moving through the 2026 U.S. primaries, especially in Democratic contests where the primary winner can effectively determine who goes to Washington. The article focuses on how crypto Super PAC money is being deployed, how the messaging is presented to voters, and why the gap between campaign ads and disclosure filings has become central to the debate.
Protect Progress spends more than $4.9 million for Adrian Boafo
The spending cited in the Forbes article centers on Protect Progress, the Democratic-facing arm of the Fairshake network funded by Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz. According to Federal Election Commission filings described in the article, Protect Progress has put more than $4.9 million behind Maryland delegate Adrian Boafo. Boafo is running in the crowded Democratic primary to succeed retiring Representative Steny Hoyer in Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District.
The article frames the controversy around two loud but incomplete narratives. One side presents crypto as freedom and inclusion, while the other treats it as fraud. Evans argues that neither framing gives voters enough clarity during an election. The ads supporting Boafo discuss keeping ICE out of local policing, standing up to Donald Trump and addressing the cost of living. They do not mention cryptocurrency. The funding is disclosed in FEC paperwork, but that information is available mainly to those who actively search for it, while most citizens encounter the campaign through commercials and campaign materials.
Joy Reid’s “blackwashing” charge
Journalist Joy Reid, formerly of MSNBC and now host of The Joy Reid Show, used her program this week to criticize the Maryland race and the flow of crypto PAC money. She called the pattern “blackwashing”: an industry channeling funds through an organization with a progressive-sounding name to support Black candidates in Black districts, while the ads talk about public issues but leave out the industry behind the political action committee writing the checks.
Forbes says Reid’s core point is supported by the filings: the ads do not mention crypto, and the money trail is visible only through formal disclosures. At the same time, the article corrects one part of Reid’s description. Reid suggested Boafo had been a crypto lobbyist. Public records point to a narrower and different fact: Boafo has been a registered in-house lobbyist for Oracle, the cloud and enterprise software company, since 2021, not a lobbyist for the crypto industry. As a description of his paid work, the crypto-lobbyist label does not hold. The article also notes that, at the time of writing, his Oracle work did not appear on his campaign website.
Boafo’s public pro-crypto record and Oracle questions
The correction does not remove Boafo’s crypto policy record. Forbes stresses that his crypto ties are real and public, but they come from his actions as a state legislator rather than from paid crypto lobbying. As a Maryland delegate, he sponsored House Bill 470, which created Maryland’s Digital Asset and Blockchain Technology Task Force. Governor Moore signed that bill into law this spring. In a 2025 post promoting the effort, Boafo wrote that blockchain is the future and urged Maryland to become the national leader in blockchain technology and crypto.
That distinction matters to the article’s central argument. The ads are not hiding the candidate’s views; they are hiding the funding source from the ordinary voter who does not consult FEC filings. Boafo is described as one of Maryland’s most openly pro-crypto legislators, and the industry is spending to amplify a candidate who already agrees with its policy direction.
The Forbes article also discusses Boafo’s work for Oracle and the tension between that record and the campaign’s ICE messaging. Lobbying disclosures show that, as an Oracle lobbyist, Boafo represented the company before the Department of Homeland Security during the years Oracle fought for and, in late 2022, won a cloud-services contract with ICE. The ads backing Boafo, however, promise to keep ICE out of local policing.
The Lever, which surfaced the record, said the filings are too vague to tie Boafo personally to that specific contract. His campaign presents him as a consistent opponent of ICE. His rival Rushern Baker, a former Prince George’s County executive, has publicly asked how voters can trust Boafo to stand up to Trump’s ICE while he works for a company tied to ICE operations. Forbes treats the gap between the message and the record as a disclosure problem of its own.
The article also cites reporting from The Lever that Boafo initially left his Oracle stock off a state ethics form before amending the filing to include the holding. It also says he later revised a 2024 filing to acknowledge Oracle’s business with Maryland’s port authority and health benefit exchange. Boafo has said he handled only federal matters for Oracle and maintained a firewall between his public and private roles.
Other Black Democratic races show the same spending template
Boafo is not presented as an isolated example. Forbes says the same network has spent heavily to support a roster of pro-crypto Black candidates. In Texas, more than $5 million from Protect Progress helped Christian Menefee, 38, defeat 78-year-old Representative Al Green in a Houston-area runoff. The article describes that contest as the most expensive House primary in the state. The ads focused on generational change and did not mention cryptocurrency.
In Georgia, roughly $4 million helped Jasmine Clark win an open primary. The candidates and races differ, but Forbes identifies a consistent template: a pro-crypto contender is amplified by industry money, while advertising highlights everyday political issues and does not name the industry behind the spending.
The same network has also spent against Black Democrats it views as hostile to the industry. Forbes notes that it spent millions to defeat Al Green, who is Black, because he was a staunch crypto critic. Green voted against the GENIUS Act and accused the industry of trying to control Congress. The network has also spent against other Black Democrats it sees as opponents, including Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton.
Forbes draws a clear line from those examples: the dividing line is not race, but whether a candidate is an industry friend or critic. Black candidates sit on both sides of the spending. Because many of these districts are overwhelmingly Democratic, the primary can decide the seat. The article cites Pew Research Center data saying about 83 percent of Black voters identify with or lean Democratic. In these deep-blue seats, the industry is helping decide who advances to Washington.
The CLARITY Act raises the stakes in Washington
The article connects the primaries to pending crypto legislation in the Senate. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, or CLARITY Act, is a market structure bill that would split oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC and set the operating rules for the industry. The bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee on May 14 in a 15-9 vote and was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1, awaiting a floor vote.
Only two Democrats joined every Republican to advance the bill out of committee. One was Arizona’s Ruben Gallego. The other was Maryland’s junior senator, Angela Alsobrooks. Forbes notes that Alsobrooks is an original cosponsor of the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin law signed in July 2025. She also brokered the stablecoin-yield compromise with Republican Thom Tillis that helped move the CLARITY Act out of committee.
Alsobrooks has endorsed Boafo and appears in his campaign ad alongside Hoyer and Maryland governor Wes Moore. At the same time, Forbes says her record does not support a simple claim that she is a crypto industry sycophant. She fought consumer-protection language into both bills, cosponsored the End Crypto Corruption Act, and described her committee vote as a vote to continue working in good faith, not a promise to support the bill on the Senate floor.
Maryland’s other senator, Chris Van Hollen, provides the contrast. He sits on the same committee and voted no on the CLARITY Act, as he did on the GENIUS Act. According to the article, his objection is not to the technology itself. He proposes stronger rules on illicit finance and disclosure. He also fought for an ethics amendment that would have barred senior government officials from holding crypto business interests while in office. That amendment failed 11-13, leaving the issue unresolved as the bill heads toward the floor.
Outside money becomes the issue in Maryland’s Fifth District
Back in Maryland, the funding has become a campaign issue in its own right. The Fifth District seat is open for the first time in 45 years, and the Democratic field includes roughly two dozen candidates. Over the weekend, three of Boafo’s leading rivals set aside their own competition to protest the approximately $8.8 million in outside money behind him. Those rivals were Harry Dunn, the January 6 officer endorsed by Pelosi; Quincy Bareebe, who is largely self-funded; and Rushern Baker.
Most of the outside money, according to the Forbes article, comes from the crypto Super PAC and an AIPAC-aligned group. Dunn, Bareebe and Baker called on Hoyer, Moore and Alsobrooks, all of whom have endorsed Boafo, to press him to reject the spending. Boafo’s campaign responded that he has opposed such spending for years and is being misrepresented by his rivals.
Boafo’s pro-crypto posture also makes him an outlier among Maryland Democrats. Forbes cites the industry’s own scorecard, Stand With Crypto, which rates Maryland Democrats Anthony Brown and Kweisi Mfume, along with Van Hollen, as strongly against crypto. The article’s conclusion is that the industry is not amplifying a typical Maryland Democrat; it is spending to install an exception.
Corporate money, technology and voter disclosure
Forbes closes by separating the technology question from the campaign finance question. Evans writes that Reid’s “blackwashing” label captures a real form of capture: progressive-coded money backing selected candidates in Black districts. But the deeper problem, as framed in the article, is not crypto as a technology and not the race of the candidates. It is corporate money in politics, with crypto serving as the most aggressive current example.
The article says the machine that reshaped the landscape in 2024 has turned to local districts because their winners will cast votes on the CLARITY Act and related bills while crypto politics remain unsettled. The risk of a sharp label, according to Forbes, is that it can collapse into a broader claim that crypto equals fraud, directing anger at the technology rather than at the spending structure.
The final distinction in the article is that the technology is not the industry, and being pro-innovation is not the same as being pro-industry. A decentralized ledger is not a Super PAC, and defending one does not require defending the other. The 2026 primaries are testing whether voters in heavily Black and Democratic districts can see who funds the candidate on the screen, and what that candidate’s actual record says, before they cast a ballot.