Fellowship PAC Drops $3M on Ads Through Tether US CEO's Firm, Because of Course It Did

Crypto's newest super PAC is putting its money where its mouth is – literally through a company co-founded by Tether US CEO Bo Hines. Because when you're in the business of printing money (sorry, "maintaining a stablecoin peg"), why not also print some political influence?

Fellowship PAC launched this month with $11 million in backing and has already booked $3 million in ad services through Nxum Group, a company founded by Hines (who was President Donald Trump's crypto adviser before moving to Tether last year), his father, and another partner. That's not a conflict of interest – that's just good synergy. Like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse's PR.

The PAC is throwing its weight behind Republican candidates in congressional and gubernatorial races. So far, the funding breaks down to $10 million from Cantor Fitzgerald and $1 million from crypto bank Anchorage Digital, according to FEC filings released Wednesday. For those keeping score at home: that's roughly 91% from the company that holds Tether's laundry list of Treasuries, and 9% from the regulated crypto bank that actually has to answer to regulators.

While Fellowship has been linked to Tether from its inception and has a Tether senior executive as its chairman, the bulk of its cash came from Cantor Fitzgerald – the New York financial-services giant that handles reserves for Tether's USDT stablecoin. Cantor's former chief Howard Lutnick now serves as Trump's Commerce Secretary. It's almost like this whole thing was planned at a very fancy dinner.

The ad spend has gone to: $300,000 for Clay Fuller (who took over Marjorie Taylor Greene's Georgia seat), $850,000 for Nate Morris's Kentucky Senate bid, and $350,000 to back Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts. That's $1.5 million in ads, meaning there's another $1.5 million somewhere that we haven't found yet – or perhaps it's being deployed as we speak, because nothing says "transparency" like dropping seven figures on political ads through a maze of connected entities.

When Fellowship first went public, it announced $100 million in pledged backing – a figure that would rival leading crypto PAC Fairshake. That level hasn't materialized yet, though Anchorage Digital called its contribution "an investment in the U.S. crypto policy process." Translation: we're giving you a million bucks so you don't regulate us into oblivion. Classic.

Whether Tether or Tether US can directly contribute remains unclear, since non-U.S. entities can't directly participate in U.S. campaign finances. Neither Tether US, Cantor, nor Fellowship responded to requests for comment. Shocking. Absolutely zero percent surprised.