Key Takeaways
- FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has said that he may donate over $100 million within the 2024 presidential election.
- He added that he may donate as much as $1 billion, relying on the candidates and the marketing campaign points which can be in play.
- He donated $5.2 million to Biden’s marketing campaign final yr and has donated greater than $9 million to congressional candidates.
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FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has said that he may spend as much as $1 billion within the 2024 U.S. presidential elections.
FTX CEO Might Donate As much as $1 Billion
CNBC reported today that Bankman-Fried revealed his spending plans in an interview on the podcast “What’s Your Downside?”
Bankman-Fried reportedly expects to donate “north of $100 million” with a “smooth ceiling” of $1 billion within the 2024 elections. “I might hate to say exhausting ceiling, as a result of who is aware of what’s going to occur between at times,” he commented.
He added that he would decide the exact quantity primarily based on the candidates and their insurance policies, concluding that the quantity is “depending on precisely who’s operating the place [and] for what.”
A $1 billion donation would break current data a number of occasions over, primarily based on knowledge from Open Secrets and techniques cited by CNBC. Thus far, the biggest single U.S. political donors are the Republican entrepreneurs Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, who spent $218 million in 2020.
SBF Has Made Prior Donations
Bankman-Fried has a historical past of earlier political donations.
Within the November 2020 U.S. elections, he donated $5.2 million to Joe Biden’s marketing campaign. That was the second-largest donation to Biden behind the $56 million spent by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
By April 2021, Bankman-Fried had spent over $9 million on congressional candidates via his Shield Our Future PAC. Now, that quantity is estimated at $20 million. One candidate that benefited from the PAC—Democratic candidate Carrick Flynn of Oregon—was defeated in a major final week by Republican Andrea Salinas.
Open Secrets and techniques has named different donors throughout the crypto business. These names embrace Ripple executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, Coinbase authorized executives Paul Grewal and Juan Suarez, ex-Bittrex CEO Invoice Shihara, and Kraken CEO Jesse Powell.
Latest stories from CNBC counsel that the crypto business and its members spent $30 million for the reason that 2020 election cycle.
Disclosure: On the time of writing, the creator of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and different cryptocurrencies.