The crypto industry has stepped up its lobbying efforts amid the crypto season that started last year. In 2022, market participants will spend $25.57 million on lobbying in the United States.
This number appears in a study published by Money Mongers on February 23. The number is based on data from OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit, that tracks lobbying expenses (which must be publicly accessible by law) in the U.S.
According to this data, the general rise of the industry’s lobbying budget is 922% in the five years between 2017 and 2022. In 2017, when the price of Bitcoin rocketed for the first time, the young industry spent only $ 2.5 million in lobbying efforts. during the last year, this amount was at $ 25.57 million. Last year, stakeholders raised the cost by 121.41% from $11.54 million in 2021.
The leader of the spending list is the US-based crypto exchange Coinbase, which paid $ 3.3 million to 32 lobbyists in 2022. The top three were completed by the Blockchain Association, with 18 lobbyists ($ 1.9 million), and Robinhood with 20 lobbyists ($1.84). million).
The American subsidiary of the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance.US, occupies only the ninth place in the list with $ 960,000 spent in 2022. However, the level of initial expenditure of Coinbase remains stable – issuing around $ 1-1.5 million every year – while Binance .US started spending only in 2021, raising efforts from $160,000 to almost $1 million in twelve months.
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The overall expenditure of crypto companies for lobbying in America is slightly more than $ 50 million in six years, which is more than modest if we compare this number with other industries. For example, pharmaceutical companies are spending more than $350 million in 2022 on federal lobbying efforts.