Democrats take Congress after crypto’s election spending fails
Nov 4, 2026
Democrats sweep Congress and Block agrees to pay the DOJ $764 million.
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Democrats are projected to take control of both chambers of Congress,
flipping the balance of power over crypto legislation.
Crypto super PACs spent heavily to stop it,
including an unprecedented $63 million in Ohio to defeat Sherrod Brown.
Brown won his seat back anyway,
returning one of the industry's sharpest critics to
the Senate.
And Senator Elizabeth Warren,
widely seen as crypto's biggest opponent in Congress,
is now likely to chair the Senate Banking Committee
that any crypto bill would need
to clear.
The AI infrastructure trade
is also facing threat after Democrats took Congress.
Those fears sharpened in Texas,
where Democrat Gina Hinojosa won on a platform backing a
moratorium of AI data centers.
Texas accounts for 27 percent of planned
U.S. data center power capacity.
Following the Republican losses,
Elon Musk wrote on X that data centers in space look
pretty appealing right now.
And Jack Dorsey's payments company Block has agreed
to pay $764 million to settle a Justice
Department probe into its anti-money laundering controls.
That's larger than the $566 million profit Block reported
for the third quarter.
It comes as Block earns less
with its Bitcoin gross profit falling 50% to $52 million last
quarter.
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