The Blockchain Network: Crypto Begins To Fret Over Winklevoss Brothers’ Embrace Of Maga

A pair of the cryptocurrency industry’s best-known billionaires is going full MAGA. President Donald Trump is thrilled.

The rest of the $4 trillion industry? Not so much.

Over the past year, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss — the Facebook-famous brothers who turned an early bet on bitcoin into a crypto empire — have emerged as Trump’s fiercest allies in the digital assets world and major Republican donors.

Their transformation into MAGA heavyweights has handed them new power on big decisions. In July, they pressed Trump directly to scrap his pick to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates crypto. On Tuesday, the White House withdrew the nomination.

But the brothers’ outright embrace of Trump is also beginning to stoke concern within the industry, which has sought to keep its political activity bipartisan. For some, the Winklevoss’ rise within the MAGA movement is undermining that effort, threatening to make crypto toxic to Democrats. That could put the industry on shaky ground if and when Democrats take back control in Washington.

The concerns illustrate the industry’s precarious political position. Biden-era financial regulators cracked down on crypto’s biggest players, triggering a backlash against Democrats that, for some in the industry, rages on today. And while crypto supports the Trump administration’s deregulatory moves, many executives have avoided ostracizing Democrats, since bipartisan support will be needed in Congress for any crypto legislation to pass.

“The cardinal rule of politics is that the pendulum always swings back,” said Rep. Sam Liccardo, a crypto-friendly Democrat whose California district includes parts of Silicon Valley. “I don’t think anybody in this town would recommend that an industry put their eggs in one party’s basket.”

A crypto official granted anonymity to speak freely said the industry needs to remain bipartisan. If it becomes “a Republican-only issue, crypto is just going to get killed,” the official said.

Omeed Malik, a Trump-supporting financier and friend of the Winklevoss brothers, said the Biden administration’s clampdown on crypto soured the twins on Democrats. Their support for Trump is a direct result of the “lawfare and, frankly, discrimination” that the crypto industry felt from the Biden administration and Democrats at large, he said. The Winklevoss’ company, a crypto trading platform called Gemini, faced lawsuits and probes from both the Biden-era Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC. In January, it paid $5 million to settle the CFTC case.

“By and large, they’ve been the enemy of crypto,” Malik said of Democrats. “They have no one to blame but themselves.”

The Winklevoss brothers, who gained widespread fame from their dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over who gets credit for inventing Facebook, have been long-time players in crypto. But their prominence is now on the rise: Gemini went public on Wall Street last month. Its stock is down 35 percent since debuting Sept. 12.

And their hand in derailing the CFTC chair nomination of Brian Quintenz, a well-regarded former regulator who led policy for venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund, revealed how influential they have become inside the administration. The Winklevoss brothers had told Trump that Quintenz was not aligned with the MAGA agenda. Quintenz has suggested the Winklevoss twins turned on him because he wouldn’t promise to “make amends” for the CFTC’s prosecution of crypto firms like Gemini.

“This is a serious demonstration of the power the Winklevoss brothers wield in Washington,” said Nic Carter, founding partner of the crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures.

Trump has called the brothers “smart,” “male models” and “the whole package.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement that the “only special interest driving President Trump and the Administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”

A spokesperson for Gemini did not respond to requests for comment.

Politically, the brothers have become far more active than ever before. They each donated $1 million in bitcoin to Trump’s campaign last year after initially putting their money behind other GOP primary hopefuls like Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott.

Last month, the Winklevoss brothers pledged another $21 million to the Digital Freedom Fund PAC, a group focused on supporting conservative candidates aligned with Trump’s crypto agenda — a marked shift from their support for crypto-friendly candidates on both sides of the aisle during the 2024 cycle. And they’ve already funneled virtually all of their political spending for next year’s midterms — more than $5 million, as of June 30 — toward GOP candidates and groups, campaign finance records show.

Their donations this year include $1 million to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc., hundreds of thousands of dollars each to Republicans’ House and Senate campaign committees and maximum donations to roughly two dozen Republican candidates. They also dished out more than $160,000 each in January to a committee linked to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Winklevoss twins have given to only two Democrats so far this cycle — Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Ritchie Torres, both of New York. That’s in sharp contrast to when the pair first entered political giving in 2018, when their contributions, though far smaller at the time, went exclusively toward Democrats.

The approach is also at odds with other industry-led political spending efforts that have sought to cultivate support from both Democrats and Republicans. The twins donated during the last election cycle to a super PAC network known as Fairshake that showered more than $130 million on pro-crypto House and Senate candidates from both parties across the country.

That group has replenished its war chest with more than $140 million ahead of the 2026 elections. But this time, the Winklevoss twins are spurning that effort and supporting their own PAC.

“We know from [Democrats’] past behavior that they will resort to whatever bad faith tactics and tricks they can think of … to try to derail the President,” Tyler Winklevoss said in a post on X announcing the brothers’ support for the group.

On Capitol Hill, the Winklevoss brothers have also become a sounding board for some. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican and one of Congress’ staunchest crypto advocates, said she has reached out to the pair before for their thoughts on devising a new regulatory framework around crypto.

“I’m actually glad that some in the industry recognize that it’s the Republicans that are supporting their industry, that are bringing these issues to the table, that the Democrats have been much more resistant to helping onshore the digital asset industry,” she said.

The Winklevoss brothers are not the only executives who have moved to the right. Across corporate America, as the Trump administration has attacked its perceived enemies in the business world, executives and lobbyists have been quick to lean into the Trump agenda.

“I see an industry that is moving further and further right because of Donald Trump and his efforts to take the issue only for Republicans,” said former Rep. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina, who was among the crypto industry’s most fervent Democratic supporters in the run-up to last year’s election. “The best outcome in Washington is that we continue to keep digital innovation in the United States and keep this issue as a bipartisan one,” he added.

For Malik, the concerns of crypto becoming a political football are overblown. He attributed the pushback against the Winklevoss brothers’ spending to their sudden political rise.

“That’s going to rub some people the wrong way,” he said. “I don’t think there’s genuine criticism as much as it is other stakeholders potentially apprehensive about them ascending as rapidly as they are within crypto and politics.”

Many Democrats are still engaging with the industry, however. A dozen Democratic senators are pushing their Republican counterparts for more sway over a pending crypto bill that would outline how the SEC and CFTC should oversee the industry. Attacking those lawmakers could backfire, executives say.

“And then,” said Carter, the crypto investor. “it’s political crypto winter.”