Andrew Yang In Spotlight As US Congress Sees Number of Crypto Lobbyists Nearly Triple Since 2018

Andrew Yang, a former U.S. presidential candidate, is among the rapidly-growing number of cryptocurrency lobbyists aiming to influence Congress into favorable regulation for cryptocurrency.

The Growing Crypto Lobby: A Tuesday report from Public Citizen finds that the number of cryptocurrency lobbyists has nearly tripled over a span of three years.

In 2018, 115 cryptocurrency lobbyists spent a total of $2.2 million. Today, the amount of spending for the cause has quadrupled with 320 lobbyists spending $9 million in 2021.

One of the biggest spenders in this group was cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc COIN, which spent over $2 million on lobbying for cryptocurrency. Last month, Benzinga reported that the cryptocurrency exchange had formed a political action committee (PAC) for the purpose of promoting more cryptocurrency-forward policy creation.

Meta Platforms Inc FB was also found to have spent $180,000 on four lobbyists for its failed cryptocurrency venture Diem. Meta sold Diem to Silvergate Capital Corp. SI for $200 million in January 2021.

Former Presidential Candidate In Focus: Yang’s lobbying efforts, however, stand out from the rest given the unique structure of the group. Lobby3 is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that employs decentralized governance while pushing for pro-cryptocurrency regulations in Washington.

Lobby3 has been raising money through an NFT sale that will end on March 11. The DAO also has three levels of Ethereum ETH/USD based membership tokens priced at 0.07 ETH, 1 ETH, and 40 ETH.

“Most people in web3 probably enjoyed not having the attention of regulators, but we have to know that ship has sailed,” said Yang, in an interview with The Defiant.

“In my ideal world, you don’t have this stuff operating out of the SEC, which is going to take its relatively antiquated framework and just try and apply it to other things. You want a new agency around digital assets and new currencies,” he said.

Price Action: At press time, ETH was trading at $2,567, down 0.69% in the last 24 hours. Apex cryptocurrency Bitcoin BTC/USD traded about 1% lower at $38,972.79.

Photo: Courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia