Washington ― Detroit U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar’s investment in cryptocurrency is again benefiting his reelection campaign ― adding $1.76 million in value for the last fundraising quarter that vaulted his war chest to nearly $7.9 million as of June 30, according to a disclosure filed Tuesday.
Meanwhile, two of Thanedar’s challengers in the Democratic primary contest, former state Rep. Adam Hollier and state Rep. Donovan McKinney of Detroit, each outraised the two-term congressman in individual donations during the three-month period that ended June 30.
Hollier posted $277,300 in receipts and ended with $358,300 in the bank, while McKinney finished just behind him at $272,100 raised and $216,700 in cash reserves.
Thanedar only raised about $32,000 in contributions for the quarter, as he hardly spends any time fundraising ― focusing instead on his job in Congress, he said Wednesday.
“This gives us the power to communicate with voters across every neighborhood in the district,” Thanedar said in a statement announcing his campaign’s cash on hand. “We’re making sure people know we’re fighting for them whether it’s standing up to Trump or solving problems right here at home.”
Thanedar, a millionaire businessman who has largely self-funded his campaigns, last year took nearly $4 million in cash from his campaign and invested it in a cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund.
The Detroit News first reported in April 2024 that Thaneder had put the millions in campaign funds into cryptocurrency, a move that campaign finance experts say is rare and financially risky though allowed under federal law.
Thanedar has said he got the idea after learning that a few other candidates invest campaign funds, including Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California.
In the last three months, Thanedar said his campaign’s latest bitcoin investment in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) produced $1.76 million in profit and interest income (unrealized gains), which are listed as “investment income” for the second quarter.
Like any investment strategy, bitcoin investments aren’t without risk: In the first quarter of 2025, Thanedar listed a loss of $776,094 amid a crash in cryptocurrency values in February and March.
“I’m a risk taker,” Thanedar said Wednesday. “This is just an investment decision depending on your risk tolerance. … In the previous quarter, the value of my account went down. The next quarter, this may be up or it may be lower. You never know.”
Investing campaign money is generally legal under federal campaign election regulations, which allow political committees to transfer funds for investment purposes to other accounts. The invested funds just must be returned or transferred to the campaign account before they may be used to make campaign expenditures under Federal Election Commission rules.
Thanedar has said he would cash out when he needs the money for his reelection campaign. In the meantime, a benefit of the crypto investment is he can skip long hours of calling campaign donors to raise money.
Thanedar said his sons encouraged him to invest in crypto at the Thanksgiving dinner table back in 2017 and he took their advice and did so. He decided to invest some of the money he’d donated to his congressional campaign for the same reason, he said.
“Digital currency is the future,” he said.
Hollier on Wednesday took a victory lap for raising the most from donors during his first 11 weeks in the race for Michigan’s 13th District, which covers parts of Detroit, Downriver communities and the Grosse Pointes.
He criticized Thanedar not for his campaign’s crypto investments but for his use of nearly $1 million of his official U.S. House funds to pay for ads and billboards to promote his office.
“While people are struggling to pay the bills, Rep. Thanedar has spent his time in Congress spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on billboards promoting himself across the district,” Hollier said in a statement.
“It’s no wonder the people of this district had no interest in kicking in more of their hard earned money to support Shri’s ongoing vanity project.”
His campaign crypto investments are another way that Thanedar has “broken the mold” as a member of Congress, said Dave Dulio, a political scientist at Oakland University.
“No one has spent official money in the way or amount that he did last cycle. There were TV ads everywhere, and from my perspective it was a brilliant move,” Dulio said.
“Now, with the crypto, who else is doing that?”
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