Dragonfly Crypto Fund Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi: Donations to Politicians Will Be Sold Off
Haseeb Qureshi posted that once you donate to politicians, they will sell your phone number and email into a list, and during election season, your phone will be inundated with fundraising spam. His advice is to use dedicated junk numbers and emails for donations. He concludes that there are no good returns for good deeds.
He is a managing partner at the crypto fund Dragonfly, which has a fourth fund phase of about $650 million in 2026, and hosts the podcast The Chopping Block. He also identifies as an effective altruist, donating about one-third of his income to charity over the long term, and has previously donated tens of thousands of dollars and liquidated personal assets during his early poker days. This time, he is not talking about charities, but about campaign donation lists.
The post does not name specific candidates, parties, or data buyers, nor does it provide the contract text for selling lists. The incremental information is that the act of donating creates resalable contact assets, which are repeatedly utilized in the next election cycle.
U.S. campaign fundraising has long relied on the reuse of small donation lists, with volunteers, consulting firms, and list brokers circulating contact information among allied campaigns. The result is that a single donation turns into long-term calling rights. He uses the term "junk number" to shift this issue from a moral complaint to a segregation solution.
As a public philanthropist, he separates political donations from effective altruistic donations: the latter pays based on intervention outcomes, while the former pays based on the election machinery, accompanied by commoditized contact information. If the phone is unusable, it is the user-end bill of this machinery.
In market mechanisms, this is a list trade, not a cryptocurrency price fluctuation. The buyers are campaign committees, consulting firms, and list suppliers; the sellers are the attention of donors who are repeatedly called. The funds flow to call centers, SMS gateways, and fundraising software. The beneficiaries are the campaign machines that control the lists; the pressured are those who have made a donation using their real numbers.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Qureshi transitioned from professional poker to software engineering and then to crypto venture capital, accustomed to viewing incentives through expected value. He sees campaign donations as a negative expected privacy transaction: you provide verifiable contact information in exchange for a receipt of "participating in politics," while the other party gains resalable calling rights. This is not the same type of contract as his annual donation of about one-third of his income to charity, where the latter buys intervention outcomes, while the former buys entry into a list.
The capital path in the campaign industry is well-established. Small donations are designed as replicable data assets, with consulting firms and list brokers reselling them among allied campaigns, state legislatures, and local elections. The marginal cost of a single donation is nearly zero for the campaign machinery, while it represents the entire election season's interruption cost for the donor. The motivation is to turn enthusiasm into a repeatable mine.
In a similar position, this is closer to data brokers selling insurance leads rather than ordinary member communications. The industry phase is that campaign fundraising treats citizen phone numbers as inventory. Whoever controls the list controls the calling rights for the next election without needing to persuade the same person to fill out a form again.
The structural change pertains to the transfer of pricing power. The price of donations is superficially in dollars, but actually includes a sellable identity pipeline. The mechanism is that regulations allow lists to circulate for political purposes, thus "doing good" is transformed into tradable contacts; segregated numbers are a personal hedge but do not change the fact that the list is still being priced.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Donations first buy the qualification to enter the list
Once enthusiasm leaves a phone number, it will be turned into inventory
Segregated channels are a hedge against resalable goodwill