Crypto’s Political Megadonor Has Shut His Wallet
Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is a $15 billion enigma. As one of the richest and most powerful men in crypto, “SBF” is already a political megadonor in the vein of Peter Thiel and George Soros: He spent millions in support of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, and was one of the biggest Democratic donors in the country in the lead-up to this year’s midterm elections. Among his PAC’s expenditures was a whopping $10 million donation to a virtually unknown Oregon House candidate who lost his primary badly. Still, his political ambitions have had Democrats salivating: In a podcast interview earlier this year, SBF suggested that he would be willing to spend up to $1 billion on political donations before 2024.
And then he went quiet—the donations he so generously doled out during the primaries have slowed significantly as the general election nears. Last week, he reneged on that $1 billion figure, in what one writer called a “political rug pull.”
It’s not that we don’t know what Bankman-Fried cares about. The son of two Stanford law professors, SBF is a devout follower of , a philanthropic movement that tries to sort out the most rational ways to do good in the world, and he has oriented his political giving around preparing for the inevitable onslaught of . Yet he has also donated to , which is backing candidates who do not seem to share his concern about pandemics. He claims to from coming into power, he has decided to hold off.
