A Fairshake poll finds 45% of Americans call crypto too risky as industry PACs deploy over $100 million into midterms.

A Politico poll conducted by Public First in April 2026 found that 45% of Americans say investing in cryptocurrency is not worth the risk, even if potential returns are high. The survey of 2,035 adults also found 44% believe AI is developing too fast, and nearly two-thirds want Congress to impose strict regulations or broad oversight on artificial intelligence.

The findings arrive as industry-backed super PACs pour unprecedented sums into the 2026 midterm cycle. Fairshake, the pro-crypto PAC backed by Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, and Ripple, has spent roughly $28 million across competitive primaries.

The pro-AI group Leading the Future, launched in August 2025, has raised more than $75 million and deployed funds in races across North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, and New York. Their combined spending exceeds $100 million.

A political liability in the making

The poll found that in hypothetical matchups, respondents were far less likely to support candidates backed by groups pushing looser AI regulation. Political observers told Politico that once voters connect campaign money to the industries behind it, backlash could be swift. “I do think if they see somebody is backed by crypto, that’s always going to be a problem,” former Ohio Representative Jim Renacci reportedly said.

The disconnect between spending and public trust is sharpest in name recognition. Only 9% of respondents have heard of Leading the Future, and just 3% recognise Fairshake. The industry has financial power that has not yet translated into public legitimacy.

That gap matters because both Fairshake and the crypto industry’s primary legislative goal, the Clarity Act, depend on the same Senate that faces midterm exposure.

As crypto.news documented, if Democrats take control of either chamber in November, Clarity Act passage odds are described as close to zero. Voter distrust of crypto at 45% makes the midterm environment a risk that PAC spending alone cannot resolve.

The right voices in the right rooms can reshape product, policy and hiring outcomes in crypto, three senior executives told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference on Tuesday. Each cited a moment from her own organization when an outside perspective changed what was being built, argued or prioritized.

Mastercard SVP for Blockchain & Digital Assets Maja Lapcevic said her company’s crypto team had initially viewed infrastructure as the key to crypto adoption, until a partner reframed the problem around usability. “We probably all thought about infrastructure to be the winning formula for crypto,” she said. “But one of our partners actually really helped shed light on how we make crypto accessible, not complex, very simple to use.” That thinking helped push Mastercard toward cards linked to stablecoins, including for users in markets with limited access to traditional financial services, she said.

Crypto Council for Innovation Chief Strategy Officer Alison Mangiero said her organization had a similar realization around staking after bringing builders into policy discussions. “Sometimes we might think we understand, or we’ll put things into a bucket,” she said. “We’ll take a shortcut and say, oh, that sounds like a fund. Oh, that sounds like interest or yield, when in actuality what’s going on under the hood is fundamentally different.” After hearing from people building staking primitives, she said, CCI understood the need to describe staking as a technical service rather than a financialized product.

Clerisy Co-Founder and Managing Partner Alexandra Wilkis Wilson brought the argument to hiring. “Many of us fall into a very comfortable bias of hiring people who not only might look like ourselves or remind you of your younger self,” she said. She recalled one 10-person startup where a Myers-Briggs analysis found that eight of the 10 team members were extroverts. “It’s really important, when you’re growing teams, to not only bring in diversity on the outside, but also to think about diversity on the inside,” she said.

Mangiero closed by framing the issue as one for the broader industry. Crypto “is having a moment right now where folks are really interested in hearing our voice,” she said, “but that begs the question, what is our voice at the end of the day?” The conference, she added, “is called Consensus for a reason.” Good policy, she said, requires the industry to ensure different communities are reflected, including token holders and people building on top of blockchain networks, while also protecting consumers and allowing innovation to thrive.

Strategy (MSTR), the world’s largest publicly traded corporate holder of bitcoin, floated the idea of selling bitcoin in order to cover its dividend obligations.
Executive Chairman Michael Saylor suggested, during its Q1 2026 earnings call, the company may sell a portion of its bitcoin holdings to fund dividend payments, stating: “We will probably sell some bitcoin to pay a dividend just to inoculate the market and send the message that we did it.”

The company disclosed a $12.54 billion net loss for Q4, while maintaining a total bitcoin position of 818,334 BTC at an average acquisition cost of $75,537 per coin.

Strategy has an outstanding dividend obligation of approximately $1.5 billion, including annualized preferred stock dividends and interest on outstanding debt. The firm has roughly 18 months of dividend coverage, based on its USD reserves relative to these obligations.

Saylor described the model as leveraging credit to acquire Bitcoin, allowing it to appreciate, and then selectively selling portions of the asset to meet dividend commitments.

“You buy bitcoin with credit, you let it appreciate, and then you sell bitcoin to pay the dividend.

Following the announcement, Strategy’s stock fell more than 4% in after-hours trading, while bitcoin declined below $81,000.

Forward Industries and crypto investment company RockawayX have co-led a strategic investment in OnRe, a startup building reinsurance infrastructure on the Solana blockchain, in a move aimed at bringing traditional risk-transfer markets onto decentralized rails.

The companies said Tuesday they co-led OnRe’s $5 million Series A round, with Forward planning to allocate up to $25 million into the platform’s yield-bearing token on Solana.

The funding will be used to expand OnRe’s platform and attract more institutional participants to onchain reinsurance, a niche but emerging segment within decentralized finance.

OnRe is attempting to shift parts of the reinsurance market — where insurers offload risk to third parties — onto blockchain infrastructure, using tokenization and smart contracts to manage underwriting and capital flows.

The initiative reflects a broader push to experiment with real-world financial services, including insurance and reinsurance, on blockchain networks, although adoption remains at an early stage.

Forward Industries (FWDI) is the largest corporate holder of Solana (SOL), with more than 7.01 million SOL on its balance sheet, according to industry data. Its Nasdaq-traded shares gained about 5.8% in Tuesday’s regular session, according to Yahoo Finance. In after hours activity, at last look, most of that increase evaporated. SOL was last trading hands at $86.61, up about 2.7%.

Forward Industries’ SOL accumulation over time. Source: CoinGecko

Related: Dubai Insurance launches crypto wallet for premium payments, claims

Blockchain pilots target inefficiencies in global reinsurance market

While estimates vary, the global reinsurance market is valued at more than $600 billion, with growth driven by rising demand for risk transfer. Total reinsurance premiums are closer to $2 trillion in value. 

Blockchain-based platforms are being tested as a way to streamline traditionally manual processes by introducing shared ledgers for real-time tracking, underwriting and claims settlement.

OnRe is not alone in this effort. Re, a decentralized reinsurance protocol, is another project aiming to connect institutional capital with collateralized insurance risk while offering tokenized yield products.

Other protocols are also emerging to provide insurance and reinsurance coverage for decentralized finance applications and smart contracts, though the sector remains early-stage and largely experimental.

There are also efforts to apply blockchain and digital assets across different parts of the insurance value chain. For example, insurance broker Aon has tested the use of stablecoins for paying insurance premiums. 

Tim Fletcher, CEO of Aon’s financial services devision, said tokenized assets are likely to become increasingly integrated into traditional financial systems. 

Related: Crypto Biz: Capital has no consensus

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

TLDR:

• • Strategy held 818,334 BTC as of May 3, 2026, reflecting a 22% year-to-date growth in bitcoin holdings.
    
  • STRC preferred stock raised $5.58B year to date, scaling to $8.5B total in just nine months of existence.
    
  • Strategy achieved a 9.4% BTC Yield and a $4.97B BTC Dollar Gain through the first four months of 2026.
  • The company has met 23 consecutive preferred dividend payments, totaling over $693 million since early 2025.

---

Strategy Inc posted a net loss of $12.54 billion for the first quarter of 2026. The loss was driven by a $14.46 billion unrealized loss on its bitcoin holdings.

Bitcoin prices fell during the quarter, pulling down the carrying value of the company’s digital assets. Despite the loss, Strategy continued expanding its bitcoin position and raising capital through its preferred equity products.

Bitcoin Holdings Expand Even as Prices Fall

Strategy held approximately 818,334 BTC as of May 3, 2026, marking a 22% growth year to date. The average purchase price per bitcoin stood at roughly $75,537.

The company’s total digital asset cost basis reached $61.81 billion. The market value of those holdings came in at $64.14 billion, based on a bitcoin price of about $78,374 as of May 1.

The company achieved a BTC Yield of 9.4% year to date through its capital markets activity. It also recorded a BTC Gain of 63,410 bitcoins and a BTC Dollar Gain of approximately $4.97 billion.

These figures reflect Strategy’s ongoing effort to grow bitcoin holdings on a per-share basis. The metrics are used internally to assess whether capital raises are accretive to shareholders.

President and CEO Phong Le addressed the broader market environment during the earnings announcement. “Adoption of Bitcoin continues to grow in 2026. Digital Credit, highlighted by STRC, has been a big success,” Le said.

He pointed to rising institutional activity from major banks as further validation of the company’s direction. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Citi were among those named as expanding into bitcoin-related services.

Strategy raised $11.68 billion year to date to fund its bitcoin acquisition strategy. The company used proceeds from its at-the-market offering program, pulling in $7.37 billion during Q1 alone.

An additional $4.32 billion came in between April 1 and May 3. Cash and cash equivalents stood at $2.21 billion as of March 31, 2026, down slightly from $2.30 billion at year-end 2025.

Total revenues rose 11.9% year over year to $124.3 million for the quarter. Gross profit reached $83.4 million, with a gross margin of 67.1%, compared to 69.4% in Q1 2025.

The software business remained a stable contributor to overall operations. Strategy continues to describe itself as an industry leader in AI-powered enterprise analytics software.

STRC Preferred Stock Sees Strong Demand

Strategy’s STRC preferred stock raised $5.58 billion year to date, representing 189% growth. The product scaled to $8.5 billion in just nine months, making it the largest preferred stock by market capitalization globally.

Daily trading volume reached $375 million, while volatility dropped to 3%. STRC maintained that stability even through the recent bitcoin bear market.

CFO Andrew Kang highlighted the company’s dividend track record during the quarter. “We continue to extend our track record of servicing our dividends, having now met our payment obligations on time and in full across 23 consecutive distributions,” Kang said.

Total cumulative preferred dividends declared and paid have reached over $693 million since early 2025. Kang also cited a BTC Dollar Gain of approximately $5 billion through the first four months of the year.

Executive Chairman Michael Saylor spoke to the growing ecosystem around the STRC instrument. “STRC has scaled to $8.5 billion in just 9 months and is now the largest preferred stock by market cap in the world,” Saylor said.

He attributed the product’s performance to its design, which extracts bitcoin’s returns while engineering price stability.

Saylor added that the company has proposed doubling STRC’s dividend payment frequency to a semi-monthly schedule.

Over $150 million of STRC is now held in corporate treasuries, including Prevalon, Strive, and Anchorage. More than $270 million sits across DeFi protocols such as Apyx and Saturn.

Strategy carries a Sharpe ratio of 2.53 on STRC. The company positions itself as the dominant issuer of digital credit instruments in the world.

Operating Loss Widens Year Over Year

Strategy’s operating loss for Q1 2026 reached $14.47 billion, compared to $5.92 billion for Q1 2025. The unrealized bitcoin loss of $14.46 billion accounted for nearly all of that figure.

Under current accounting standards, bitcoin must be marked to fair value each reporting period. Any price decline flows directly into the income statement as an unrealized loss.

Net loss attributable to common stockholders was $12.77 billion, compared to $4.23 billion in Q1 2025. On a diluted per-share basis, the loss came in at $38.25, versus $16.49 in the prior-year period.

The company’s preferred dividends contributed to the gap between net loss and the figure attributable to common stockholders. Strategy has declared and paid $692.5 million in cumulative preferred dividends to date.

Strategy confirmed it does not expect to generate accumulated earnings and profits for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

Distributions on preferred equity instruments are therefore expected to be treated as non-taxable return of capital for the foreseeable future.

This treatment is expected to remain in place for at least ten years. Shareholders are advised to consult their own tax advisors regarding individual circumstances.

Despite the reported losses, Strategy maintained its standing as the world’s largest corporate bitcoin holder. The company stated that its combination of bitcoin treasury management and enterprise analytics software supports long-term value creation.

Strategy’s dashboard at strategy.com serves as a public disclosure channel for its holdings, KPIs, and securities data. A live webinar covering the Q1 results was held on May 5 at 5:00 p.m. ET.

The path to mainstream crypto adoption runs through more visible, controllable product design, executives from PayPal, Robinhood, Public.com and 248 Ventures told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference Tuesday.

“It’s important to tell users with AI products what the underlying system is not doing in addition to what it is doing,” Public.com CFO Sruthi Lanka said. Public has built its agentic-investing product so that users review and approve a “deterministic recipe” before any trade is placed. “Make sure it’s not a black box,” she said. The result, according to Lanka, is an organization where everyone is now writing code: “I have accountants writing code. We have marketing people playing with code. Everyone is an engineer, and I think that’s only going to become more commonplace.”

Smitha Purohit, PayPal’s senior director of product for crypto, said trust is “a factor of two things;” whether users can start small and experiment, and whether the company has their back when something goes wrong.

“When you build too fast, compliance comes as a secondary thought, and I don’t think that’s the way to build scalable products. It should be compliance first, regulatory first, and that’s how PayPal looks at everything,” she said.

Nicola White, Robinhood’s vice president of crypto institutions and general manager of Bitstamp, said 50% of the company’s new first-quarter users self-identified as first-time investors, pointing to that as the reason to push back on retail product velocity.

“We’re all building so quickly. I think we need to make sure that we’re slowing down and thinking about: is what we’re building the right thing for the customer? […] I think we’re introducing risks that maybe people don’t understand,” she said, citing the Oct. 10 crypto liquidation event and questioning, “Is 100x something that a retail client should be offered?”

Lindsey Bell, Chief Investment Strategist at 248 Ventures, framed adoption as ultimately an emotional decision. “People’s purchasing or usership is really driven by emotion; it’s driven by fear. You have to be able to tap into that. And I think you do that best by talking to your customers and your prospects and really figuring out what’s making their heart beat,” she said, citing earlier remarks from a former Mastercard CMO that traditional market research is now only “23% accurate.”

In a closing lightning round, Lanka predicted users will “increasingly make the wealth manager redundant”; White predicted CLARITY Act passage and tokenized RWAs hitting stride in the U.S.; Bell floated that “by the beginning of next year,” 80% of Americans could be operating with at least one AI agent; and Purohit predicted “pay as you go” models for content, pointing to stablecoins as a way to enable micropayments.