SBF, the former CEO of the now-bankrupt exchanges FTX and FTX.US, gave “dark money” to the democratic party. Elon Musk stated on Twitter that the secret donations to the democratic party, which only revealed $40M, likely totaled over $1B.
In a recent interview with crypto journalist Tiffany Fung, SBF stated that he donated equally to both parties. “I contributed to both parties. I gave roughly the same amount to both parties,” Bankman-Fried told Tiffany Fung over the phone.
“All of my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political contributions that are not made public. “It’s not for regulatory reasons; it’s because reporters freak out when you donate to Republicans.” They’re all extremely liberal, and I didn’t want to get into a fight with them.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizen United case, which permits anonymous donations, has made hidden donations conceivable. Since this judgment in 2010, more than $1 billion has flowed into federal races.
Elon Musk is outspoken on Twitter about the FTX bankruptcy issue and the SBF case. Musk hinted on Twitter on the 13th of November that he didn’t expect the SEC to look into the exchange because SBF is a significant donor to the Democratic Party.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican, also referred to FTX as “a Bernie Maddof-Esque swindle that lost investors billions.”
Senate urges lawmakers to act quickly on SBF’s case
The Senate scheduled a hearing on the 1st of December to debate the issue and compel lawmakers to put in place a legislative framework for digital assets quickly. CEO Sam-Bankman Fried, the central figure at the center of this affair, was not present during the Senate Agriculture Committee hearing. Rostin Banham, the head of the body that oversees the derivatives markets, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), was asked to give a testimony. Benham demanded “complete market regulation” and quick control of most cryptocurrency markets.
Benham had a close working relationship with Bankman-Fried over the previous year. Therefore his evidence is debatable. The Bill supported during the hearing was the same as the dubious one that Bankman-Fried had earlier this year.
The president of the advocacy group Better Markets, Denis Keheller, debated the impact SBF might have had on the CFTC. How much access and power Sam-Bankman Fried may have acquired at the agency is unknown.
According to him, public officials frequently overreact to incidents like this by declaring that the business must be reined. Instead, this hearing is intended to advance a bill that FTX supported and promoted.
SBF’s hedge fund took a significant hit to support the FTX exchange
The deep and established ties between Sam Bankman-digital Fried’s asset enterprises were highlighted when hedge fund Alameda Research intervened to protect FTX from a loss of up to $1bn following a client deal that went wrong on the cryptocurrency platform.
According to persons with knowledge of the situation, Alameda took on FTX’s load in early 2021 when a client’s leveraged wager on a mysterious token shredded through protective buffers meant to protect the exchange from suffering losses when a trade goes wrong.
The incident, which was not previously publicized and occurred more than a year before FTX filed for bankruptcy, demonstrates how Bankman-Fried would shift the weight to another pillar of his crypto conglomerate when one became stressed, treating the companies that were publicly represented as separate as if they were a single entity.
It also demonstrates how the connections between Bankman-Fried’s proprietary trading business and his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, served as a support system before this year’s turmoil in the market for digital assets when FTX saved Alameda itself with billions of dollars in loans as its other lenders withdrew.
