• Crypto bull Sam Bankman-Fried largest crypto donor in US election campaign
• Funding target of billions withdrawn
• FTX founder’s assets plummeted
The midterm elections in the United States have attracted particular attention this year. The fight between Democrats and Republicans for a majority in the US Congress should not only point the way for a possible renewed candidacy of ex-president donald trump the outcome of the elections will also largely determine what US politics will look like in the next two years. Because if the Republicans take over the majority in the Senate, it will be much more difficult for Democratic US President Joe Biden to govern.
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A landslide victory for the Republicans, which was predicted by many observers in advance, did not materialize, but a decision on the majority in the two chambers of Congress has still not been made – a runoff election in the US state of Georgia should now bring clarity.
Crypto industry with millions in donations
In the run-up to elections, businesses and individuals in the US spend large sums of money to support their favorite party. The money flows in particular into election campaigns.
The crypto industry also mobilized millions of dollars for the US midterm elections this year. The background to the campaign donations is in particular the hope of influencing legislation, as Congress is currently debating stricter regulation of digital assets, reports the Reuters news agency.
Sam Bankman-Fried largest single crypto donor
The US entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and is its CEO, is the largest single donor in the US from the crypto sector. Bankman-Fried ranked sixth overall with donations of $39,826,856, according to data from OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan and independent research group.
The crypto expert has given his money primarily to the Democrats, from whom he apparently hopes to support the crypto sector, especially with regard to regulatory efforts, which the FTX boss is anything but opposed to. In the past, the entrepreneur had advocated a regulatory approach on several occasions, particularly in the area of decentralized finance (DeFi). He recently proposed an “aptitude test” that would restrict access to crypto. Additionally, he also floated a licensing regime for websites interacting with DeFi and other crypto protocols, and advocated a blacklist to discourage sanctioned market participants from using centralized services. Following harsh criticism from the community, Sam Bankman-Fried adjusted some of his suggestions in a lengthy Twitter thread:
1) My *final* thoughts/post on this:
– SBF (@SBF_FTX) October 29, 2022
So Sam Bankman-Fried wants to be an active contributor to crypto regulation, which explains his financial involvement in the campaign.
$1 billion election spending no longer planned
The crypto super-rich apparently no longer plans to make campaign donations of one billion dollars by 2024, which he originally promised. In May, he himself brought up the donation amount in the Pushkin Industries podcast, but recently retracted this announcement in an interview with Politico’s Morning Money and described it as a “stupid quote”. “I think my messages were a bit sloppy and inconsistent in some cases,” he said.
In this context, the FTX founder also explained why he wanted to take a break from his campaign spending: “At some point, when you’ve got your message across to voters, there’s just not much you can do. […] “You can spend more time on it, more messaging, more money, more anything else, [aber] You’re not getting any more,” the FTX CEO told Politico.
Wealth has fallen significantly
In any case, the entrepreneur recently had to contend with massive financial losses after the crypto exchange Binance announced a partial takeover of its trading venue FTX, which led to massive outflows of funds from FTX and a slump in the crypto market. The FTX-owned crypto value FTT also came under massive pressure.
Bankman-Fried’s fortune is said to have collapsed by $16 billion to $991 million in just one day, so the crypto bull is officially no longer a billionaire. In the meantime, the losses could be significantly higher.
Binance has since backed down, but the reason is raising new concerns among crypto investors: the trading platform’s difficulties have exceeded the company’s ability to help, Binance said in a statement. In the meantime, speculation about a possible bankruptcy of FTX is doing the rounds.
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