Democrats Test Crypto Fundraising Reset With BlueVault Launch-amtomessage

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2026-01-13

Democrats Test Crypto Fundraising Reset With BlueVault Launch

Democrats are hoping to re-engage crypto-aligned voters and donors following their landslide defeat in the 2024 U.S. presidential election by launching a new digital-asset fundraising platform.

BlueVault, a crypto fundraising service for Democratic political committees, launched Monday, allowing campaigns to accept donations in Bitcoin and stablecoins.

The launch reflects growing concern among Democrats that crypto-native voters, though politically mixed, have drifted toward the GOP largely because the party lacked messaging to engage them, according to BlueVault founder Will Schweitzer.

“I’m a big believer in crypto—this is my second company in the industry—and I’ve been working in the space for almost 10 years. I also believe deeply in the Democratic platform.” Schweitzer told Decrypt in an interview. “I look at the data and what we learned about crypto voters and donors during the 2024 cycle.”

Schweitzer said he focused on curating that data into something the left can use, finding organic and authentic ways to connect with progressives in Bitcoin and crypto.

“In 2020, crypto donors and voters turned out in what was roughly a 60–40 split for Democrats. By 2024, that likely flipped to something closer to 80–20 the other way,” he said. “At a political level, that tells us these voters and donors tend to go where the policies align with them.”

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Schweitzer, an Army veteran who organized the Crypto4Harris coalition in 2024, framed BlueVault as an extension of traditional Democratic organizing. BlueVault aims to differentiate itself from Fairshake, the crypto-SuperPac that funded Republican campaigns during the last election, by supporting small-dollar fundraising events and direct engagement.

“It’s about connecting grassroots donors to campaigns and providing the infrastructure to make that happen at scale in a way everyone is comfortable with,” Schweitzer said.

Schweitzer said the timing of the launch was driven by political momentum around regulatory clarity. He pointed to the passage of the GENIUS Act last summer as the turning point that made it feasible to build a compliant crypto payments system for campaigns under Federal Election Commission rules.

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BlueVault’s debut also comes amid a long-running internal Democratic debate over crypto regulation, shaped in large part by Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Warren has emerged as one of the party’s most prominent critics of digital assets, repeatedly warning that the industry enables illicit finance, exposes consumers to risk, and poses national security concerns.

“It fit into her CFPB work—this is the kind of issue she was willing to sink her teeth into wherever fraud appeared, and it surfaced in crypto,” Schweitzer said. “After Sam Bankman-Fried pulled the rug out from under so many people, nobody was willing to defend the space for Democrats. Most people passively went along with her, and she became the most animated voice on the issue.”

Schweitzer argued that this sustained skepticism, enforcement actions by then-SEC Chair Gary Gensler, combined with the absence of a coordinated Democratic response following the collapse of FTX, allowed Republicans to make crypto a partisan issue. While there was hope that President Joe Biden stepping aside would help Democrats win back crypto voters, but the Harris campaign’s late outreach failed to gain traction.

Despite not being able to win over the crypto-faithful in 2024, the goal of BlueVault is to decouple crypto from the political brand of Donald Trump, who has embraced the industry publicly and financially. Schweitzer said the platform’s structure aims to ensure Democratic campaigns are not dependent on large corporate crypto donors or politically aligned intermediaries.

At launch, BlueVault supports Bitcoin and USDC, Schweitzer said the choice was more about legal clarity instead of ideology.

“We are not maximalist in any way. We’re leaning in on what is legal, on the assets that have the most legal clarity around them,” he said. “Campaign finance is a unique space—it’s not DeFi. It’s a whole different legal regime, with a different set of considerations to make crypto useful for campaigns, beyond just signaling. It’s money that campaigns need to turn into effective outcomes.”

Additional assets, he said, could be added over time, depending on regulation and donor demand.

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The platform lets donors discover and support committees, and track contributions, while campaigns can create custom donation pages, post video content, monitor donations in real time, and rely on automated FEC reporting. While Schweitzer did not say who was backing BlueVault, the project says it integrates “exclusively with federally regulated cryptocurrency custody and payment rail providers.”

As Democrats gear up for the 2026 midterm elections, BlueVault is betting that giving campaigns a way to raise crypto donations can help win elections and win back crypto voters.

“We give donors and people who want to engage in the political space the ability to do that without a centralized entity telling them how to do it, or relying on standard crypto groups to provide talking points. It’s a new way to engage,” Schweitzer said.

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