Item — HN Reader

Interesting, all of the transactions with Coinbase as contributor have memo fields like

    x.yyyzzz BITCOIN SOLD VIA COINBASE - PURCHASER UNKNOWN

and are followed subsequently by transactions with an (apparent) natural person as contributor with memo fields like

    x.yyyzzz Bitcoins, Contributions Previously Disclosed

So it looks like those PACs reported contributions twice, once naming the actual contributor, and once naming Coinbase. I'm not sure why they'd do that - perhaps to head off FEC questions about deposits from Coinbase?

Regardless, those don't seem to be contributions directly from Coinbase, but rather artifacts of campaign finance reporting.

On an aside, there are some transactions that jump out e.g. line B of [1] where the PAC appears to have netted $5665 for 7.49 BTC in the closing days of 2017(!).

Looking further, it seems like their reporting occasionally exchanged BTC for ETH, and the contribution reported makes sense for latter. Still, for a moment it was fun to imagine that someone got a screaming deal on a heap of BTC the day after Christmas 2017

[1]: https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201801319091289865

That's most likely from donations in Bitcoin. The PACs actually want real-world dollars, so sell any cryptocurrency recieved immediately. i that case, there's an entry for the "x.yyyzzz bitcoins were donated" part, and then one for "we sold x.yyyzzz via Coinbase for $n dollars". Overall, that translates to "we received $n dollars from $blah in the form of x.yyyzzz bitcoins", which presumably keeps the regulators happy.