Forbes Digital Assets contributor Tonya M. Evans wrote on June 18 that the cryptocurrency industry’s political spending is rising as the 2026 U.S. primaries accelerate, and that the dispute over what the money represents is intensifying with it. The article centers on Democratic primaries where campaign financing, political messaging, and voter access to information have become tightly linked. Its core point is not that the spending is hidden from formal records, but that the story voters see in campaign ads is often much narrower than the record available in election filings.
The spending figure at the center of the Maryland race is clear. According to Federal Election Commission filings cited in the article, Protect Progress, the Democratic-facing arm of the Fairshake network funded by Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz, 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, a Maryland Democrat, in the state’s Fifth Congressional District. Forbes frames the contest as an example of two loud but incomplete narratives competing for attention: one casts crypto as freedom and inclusion, while the other casts it as fraud. The article argues that neither gives voters the clarity needed during an election.
Joy Reid’s “blackwashing” charge in the Maryland race
Journalist Joy Reid, formerly of MSNBC and now host of The Joy Reid Show, directed a pointed criticism at the Maryland race during her program this week. She called the influx of crypto PAC money “blackwashing.” In her usage, the term describes an industry routing money through a group with a progressive-sounding name to support Black candidates in Black districts, while the advertisements discuss almost everything except the industry behind the political action committee writing the checks.
Forbes says Reid is right on the core charge, and that the filings support her criticism. The ads supporting Boafo focus on keeping ICE out of local policing, standing up to Donald Trump, and the cost of living. They do not mention cryptocurrency. The money is disclosed at the Federal Election Commission, but only in the formal sense: it is on paper and available to people who look for it. The article emphasizes that most citizens do not go beyond commercials and campaign materials, creating a real-time information imbalance between what is technically disclosed and what ordinary voters actually see.
The article also corrects one part of Reid’s description. Reid suggested that Boafo had been a crypto lobbyist. Public records, according to Forbes, point elsewhere. Boafo has been a registered in-house lobbyist for Oracle, the cloud and enterprise software company, since 2021. He has not been a lobbyist for the crypto industry, so the label “crypto lobbyist” does not fit his paid work. Forbes adds that, at the time of writing, his work for Oracle does not appear on his campaign website.
Boafo’s public crypto record and Oracle lobbying questions
The correction does not end the issue, because Boafo’s crypto ties are real and come from his own public record. As a Maryland state delegate, he sponsored House Bill 470, which created Maryland’s Digital Asset and Blockchain Technology Task Force. Governor Moore signed the 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. Forbes draws a distinction here: the ads conceal the funding source, not necessarily the candidate’s views. Boafo is described as one of his state’s most openly pro-crypto legislators, and the industry is spending to amplify a candidate who already agrees with it.
Another layer of the Maryland controversy involves Oracle, the Department of Homeland Security, and ICE. Lobbying disclosures show that, as an Oracle lobbyist, Boafo represented the company before the Department of Homeland Security during the years when Oracle fought for and, in late 2022, won a cloud-services contract with ICE. That record sits beside ads promising to keep ICE out of local policing. The Lever, which surfaced the record, noted that the filings are too vague to tie Boafo personally to that contract. Boafo’s campaign presents him as a consistent opponent of ICE.
Rushern Baker, a former Prince George’s County executive and one of Boafo’s rivals, 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 also cites disclosure questions from The Lever about Boafo’s own filings. The Lever reported that Boafo initially left his Oracle stock off a state ethics form before amending it to include the holding. It also reported that 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 the company and kept a firewall between his public and private roles.
The same crypto network is active across Black Democratic races
Forbes says Boafo is not an isolated case. The broader pattern involves the same network spending heavily on a roster of pro-crypto Black candidates. In Texas, more than $5 million from Protect Progress helped Christian Menefee, who is 38, unseat 78-year-old Representative Al Green in a Houston-area runoff. Forbes describes that contest as the most expensive House primary in the state. The ads emphasized generational change and did not mention cryptocurrency. In Georgia, roughly $4 million helped Jasmine Clark win an open primary. The candidates and states differ, but the article identifies the same template: a pro-crypto contender is amplified by industry money, while the ads prioritize kitchen-table issues and leave the industry behind the spending unnamed.
The article also notes that the same network 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 views as hostile, including Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton. Forbes therefore says the dividing line is not race. It is the industry’s friends versus its critics, with Black candidates sitting on both sides of the spending.
That distinction matters because many of these districts are overwhelmingly Democratic. In seats that blue, the primary is effectively the election, and the candidate who wins the Democratic primary goes to Washington. Forbes cites Pew Research Center data showing that about 83 percent of Black voters identify with or lean Democratic. In these districts, industry spending is not merely participating in a debate; it is helping determine which candidates reach Congress and cast votes on digital-asset legislation.
Why the CLARITY Act raises the stakes
The article connects these primaries directly to legislation pending in the Senate. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is a market structure bill that would divide oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC and set rules under which the industry would operate. It cleared the Senate Banking Committee on May 14 by 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 in advancing it out of committee: Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego and Maryland junior Senator Angela Alsobrooks.
Alsobrooks is also an original cosponsor of the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin law signed in July 2025. Forbes says she brokered, with Republican Thom Tillis, the stablecoin-yield compromise that moved the Clarity Act out of committee. She has endorsed Boafo and appears in his campaign ad alongside Hoyer and Maryland Governor Wes Moore. At the same time, her record does not fit a simple label of crypto industry loyalist. The article notes that she fought consumer-protection language into both bills, cosponsored the End Crypto Corruption Act, and described her committee vote as only a vote to keep working in good faith, not as 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, as he did on the GENIUS Act. Forbes says his objection is not to the technology itself. He has proposed 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 fight unresolved as the bill heads toward the floor.
Outside money becomes the issue in Maryland’s Fifth District
Back in Maryland, Forbes says the money itself has become the issue. 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 their own competition aside to protest the roughly $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 Baker. Most of the outside money, according to the article, comes from the crypto super PAC and an AIPAC-aligned group.
The three rivals called on Hoyer, Moore, and Alsobrooks, all of whom have endorsed Boafo, to press him to reject the outside money. Boafo’s campaign responded that he has opposed such spending for years and is being misrepresented by his opponents. Forbes adds that Boafo’s pro-crypto posture makes him an outlier among Maryland Democrats. The industry’s own scorecard, Stand With Crypto, rates Maryland Democrats Anthony Brown and Kweisi Mfume, along with Van Hollen, as strongly against crypto. In Forbes’ framing, the industry is not amplifying a typical Maryland Democrat; it is spending to install an exception.
The article concludes by separating technology from political spending. It says Reid’s “blackwashing” label captures one real distortion: progressive-coded money backing selected candidates in Black districts. But Forbes argues that the underlying issue is not crypto technology itself and not the race of the candidates, who appear on both sides of the spending. The deeper issue is corporate money in politics, with crypto presented as the most aggressive current example. The article says the machine that reshaped the political 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.
Forbes’ final distinction is that the technology is not the industry, and pro-innovation is not the same as pro-industry. A decentralized ledger is not a super PAC, and defending the former does not require defending the latter. The 2026 primaries, in the article’s view, are testing whether voters in some of the country’s most heavily Black and Democratic districts can see, before voting, who funds the candidate on the screen and what that candidate’s record actually says. The closing questions are practical rather than rhetorical: built for whom, and disclosed to whom, are facts voters cannot learn from ads alone.