Congress has been far from united on the crypto issue thus far, particularly in the wake of the FTX collapse, and the various drafts of legislation that have been proposed have largely been dead on arrival. But Coinbase has put a significant amount of time, effort, and money into lobbying: in 2022, they spent $3.4 million lobbying the crypto industry (on top of Binance’s $1.1 million spent lobbying in the US, all coming together to amount to around $11.9 million in lobbying efforts from the industry that year).
This seems like very little relative to a company worth tens of billions of dollars?
For context the largest tech companies in the world spend in the range of $5-20M on lobbying each year. So these crypto cos spending $1-3M is either very high or in line with expectations, depending on your perspective. For AMZN, my employer, $20M is pretty small compared to the $514B revenue and $10B in profit (excluding the rivian charge). Coinbase spending $3m does seem high in that comparison.
Lobbying isn't bribes to congresspeople. It's hiring some specialists who are known to congresspeople in order to sell those congresspeople a line. After a point more money doesn't buy you that much more benefit.
This seems like very little relative to a company worth tens of billions of dollars?