SALT LAKE CITY — John Curtis, a Republican congressman from Utah, has become a favorite of the crypto industry in his bid to win the Senate seat held by the departing Mitt Romney. He took a somewhat oblong route through the telecommunications sector to get there.

At an event in Salt Lake City last week, Curtis told a few dozen crypto enthusiasts that he had a conversation a few years ago with some fellow House members about internet service providers and how to incentivize them to boost their offerings. The various lawmakers were throwing around different connection speeds — 50 megabits, 100 megabits — but when Curtis asked whether they’d ever run a speed test, he got puzzling responses.

“They looked at me like I was from another planet,” Curtis told the crowd at the Permissionless conference.

Curtis, 64, said he realized then that lawmakers needed to be smarter about regulations and actually understand the user experience. That’s particularly true in crypto, he said.

“This is so important to get government involved, because if they don’t understand what you’re doing, they’ll make really bad decisions,” the Provo-based congressman said, as the attendees nodded their head in unison. “The worst part of regulation is its unpredictability.”

Curtis’ attitude toward crypto is a big reason why digital coin enthusiasts have filled his coffers in his campaign against Democratic candidate Caroline Gleich, setting him up for what appears to be a landslide victory next month.

The Defend American Jobs PAC, a single-issue committee focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain policy, has contributed more than $1.9 million to Curtis’ campaign, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by crypto market and blockchain analyst James Delmore and verified by CNBC. Additionally, the PAC spent more than $1.5 million to oppose Curtis’ Republican primary challenger, Trent Staggs.

Ben Lucas, Curtis’ campaign spokesman, declined an interview on behalf of the congressman. He sent a statement from Corey Newman, the chief of staff, saying that, “John has always been a strong supporter of the crypto industry as it will help Utah’s economy continue to grow and be a great place to create jobs.” 

The sprawling and decentralized digital asset industry is backing Curtis and others who are publicly adopting a pro-crypto policy within their campaigns. The crypto industry accounts for nearly half of all donations made by corporations this election cycle as the sector outpaces both the big banks and oil. Of the 42 primary candidates that crypto-backed super PACs supported, they were successful in 36.

In total, crypto groups have spent over $130 million in congressional races for this year’s election, including the primaries, according to FEC data.

Three crypto PACs, which are primarily backed by Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz, have been targeting competitive Senate and House races across the U.S.

Protect Progress has given more than $10 million apiece to Senate candidates in Arizona and Michigan. In Arizona, the group favors Democrat Ruben Gallego, who is vying for the seat being vacated by Kyrsten Sinema. In Michigan, the preferred choice is Elissa Slotkin, who is currently a Democratic House member.

The Republican candidates in Indiana and West Virginia have each received more than $3 million from Defend American Jobs. In Massachusetts, a super PAC for Republican John Deaton has pulled in $2.6 million from the crypto industry. Deaton, however, is polling way behind Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is one of the crypto sector’s top antagonists in Washington.

“Elizabeth Warren is not going to lose her election in Massachusetts, so the industry can’t get rid of Warren,” said Delmore. “But they can at least help to vote out candidates who are allied with her against the crypto industry.”

One big target is Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, the chair of the banking committee. Some $40 million of crypto money has been directed at defeating Brown, and one PAC has paid for five ads designed to boost awareness of his Republican rival, Bernie Moreno, a blockchain entrepreneur. The race is currently very close and is crucial in determining which party will control the Senate.

In House races, around $3.6 million in crypto PAC money has gone to candidates in Arizona, $5.4 million in New York, more than $4.8 million in Virginia, and $5.7 million in California, with half of that spend going to Republican Michelle Park Steel.

Crypto PAC money has been party agnostic and not just focused on battleground districts. The focus is on supporting lawmakers who embrace regulation that favors the technology rather than getting in its way.

“When we talk about digital assets, when we talk about crypto, that is not about Republicans and Democrats,” said House Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), at Permissionless. “That’s about Americans, that’s about decentralization of a system that has been, literally, consolidated at the top.”

WATCH: Trump family given $337.5 million token stake in new crypto project

SALT LAKE CITY — A year ago, Samara Cohen believed there was so much pent-up demand for bitcoin that she and her team at BlackRock launched one of the first-ever spot bitcoin exchange-traded products in the U.S. Now investors are flocking in, and a lot of them are crypto enthusiasts who are new to Wall Street.

Cohen, who heads up the asset manager’s exchange-traded funds and index investments as chief investment officer, told CNBC that BlackRock now sees the demand was for a better way to access bitcoin. “It was for the ETF wrapper,” she told CNBC on stage at the Permissionless Conference in Utah.

The total market cap of all eleven spot bitcoin ETFs now tops $63 billion, with total flows of nearly $20 billion. In the last five trading days alone, spot bitcoin ETFs have seen net inflows of more than $2.1 billion, with BlackRock accounting for half of those sales.

The spike in trading volume comes as bitcoin hit its highest level since July this week, trading above $68,300. Bitcoin ended the third quarter up around 140% from the same quarter a year ago, outpacing the S&P 500, as these spot token funds and the crypto market cap move higher in lock-step. Crypto-aligned stock Coinbase closed up about 24% this week, its best week since February.

Cohen told CNBC that part of the strategy for attracting customers to its funds was teaching crypto investors about the benefits of exchange-traded products (ETPs).

13F filings, which offer quarterly reads on equity positions taken by large investors, show that 80% of the buyers of these new spot bitcoin products in the U.S. are direct investors. Of the 80% of direct investors, Cohen told CNBC that 75% had never before owned an iShare, one of the best-known and largest ETF providers on the planet.

“So we went into this journey with the expectation that we needed to educate ETF investors on crypto and on bitcoin specifically,” said Cohen. “As it turns out, we have done a lot of education of crypto investors on the benefits of the ETP wrapper.”

Before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission green-lit spot bitcoin funds in January, investors had a few ways to buy and custody cryptocurrencies. A centralized exchange like Coinbase was among the most user-friendly options for U.S investors. But the blockbuster debut of bitcoin ETPs has laid bare to Cohen and others across Wall Street, that crypto exchanges weren’t giving digital asset investors everything they needed.

It helps that the U.S. is a huge market for digital assets. New data from Chainalysis shows that North America remains the biggest crypto market globally, accounting for nearly 23% of all crypto trading volume. The blockchain analytics platform estimates that between July 2023 and July 2024, there was $1.3 trillion in on-chain value received.

Venture firm a16z found in its recently released State of Crypto report that more than 40 million Americans hold crypto.

So far, adoption has mostly been through wealth management clients asking advisors to add new spot crypto products to their portfolio.

In August, Morgan Stanley was the first big bank to allow its 15,000 financial advisors to pitch bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock and Fidelity to clients with a net worth over $1.5 million. Other firms are still performing in-house due diligence before allowing their armies of FAs to start actively pitching the funds.

“Wealth manager allocators have not been allocating,” VanEck CEO Jan van Eck told CNBC in Utah. “I mean, they’re barely even warming up.”

Van Eck drew parallels to the European market, where the company has 12 token-based products trading in Europe.

“It’s exactly what we see in Europe,” he said. “Very few private banks have really approved investment in bitcoin or ethereum or anything else in a major way.” Van Eck said his company has about $2 billion in its European crypto ETPs, and that a lot of the volume is from individual investors.

Wall Street needs rules from lawmakers on Capitol Hill before it gets more comfortable with crypto.