Crypto Billionaire Plans To Spend Whopping $1 Billion In Donations For 2024 US Elections
30-year-old crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried says he could spend $1 billion or more in the 2024 US election. He expects to give more than $100 million in the next presidential election and has a ¡°soft ceiling¡± of $1 billion, with his spending likely to be on the higher end reportedly if former President Donald Trump runs again!
Thirty-year-old crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, who is the CEO & Founder of crypto exchange FTX, says he could spend $1 billion or more in the 2024 US¡¯ election, as per a CNBC report.
If this comes true, he would easily become the biggest-ever political donor in a single election.
The crypto billionaire said in a podcast interview released yesterday, that he expects to give ¡°north of $100 million¡± in the next presidential election and has a ¡°soft ceiling¡± of $1 billion.
His spending likely to be on the higher end reportedly if former President Donald Trump runs again, as per the report.
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Sam Bankman-Fried, whose net worth is currently around $10 billion as per Bloomberg Billionaires Index, says he has already given away more than $200 million to various causes. He laos cautions that his political plans are still in flux and will be contingent on what the landscape looks like.
In the podcast, as per CNBC, the crypto billionaire said ¡°I would guess north of $100 million. As for how much more than that, I don¡¯t know. It really does depend on what happens. It¡¯s really dependent on exactly who¡¯s running where for what. [$1 billion] is a decent thing to look at as a ¡ª I would hate to say hard ceiling, because who knows what¡¯s going to happen between now and then ¡ª but at least sort of as a soft ceiling.¡±
That amount of money would be unprecedented and shatter existing records several times over, at least if it was all spent as so-called ¡°hard money,¡± which includes donations to candidates, parties, super PACs and other groups who have to report to the Federal Election Commission, as per CNBC report.
The most hard money any individual has spent in any election cycle was reportedly $218 million in 2020 by the late Republican casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, according to Washington based nonprofit organization Open Secrets.
In recent years, the Adelsons have competed to be the biggest donors in the country with Democratic billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, who have each spent between $75 and $150 million in the last three elections (not including the money they spent on their own presidential campaigns in 2020).
Beyond those well-known names, even mega-donors typically top out around $40 to $60 million per election cycle, so even $100 million, which is the lower limit of his range, would put Bankman-Fried among a tiny handful of the country¡¯s biggest donors, as per CNBC report.
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Questioning The Crypto Billionaire¡¯s Increased Political Involvement
Critics question the motives behind Bankman-Fried¡¯s increasing involvement in politics, noting that the crypto industry has been stepping up its lobbying in Washington as lawmakers and regulators look to apply new rules to the largely unregulated industry that has likely destroyed more fortunes than it has made.
He¡¯s one of several crypto donors who have started spending large amounts of money in politics seemingly out of nowhere, just as the industry comes under scrutiny.
And Bankman-Fried¡¯s biggest political investment so far did not pay off. He spent at least $12 million backing a little-known Oregon congressional candidate who ended up getting crushed in a Democratic primary last week.
In the podcast interview, Bankman-Fried reportedly said he would ¡°do it a bit differently¡± if he could do it again, but fundamentally stood by the decision to intervene in the race, saying he always viewed it as a low-probability, high-reward situation.
¡°If you¡¯re donating to political races that you think your candidate are 99% to win, you¡¯re almost certainly doing something wrong,¡± he said, since the candidate doesn¡¯t need the help. ¡°You should be donating such that you think you have a pretty substantial chance of losing, and I stand by that.¡±
Bankman-Fried has reportedly already spent at least $20 million so far this year supporting candidates in Democratic congressional primaries who have pledged to push the U.S. government to invest in stopping the next pandemic.
Bankman-Fried is an adherent of Effective Altruism, a utilitarian philosophy which promotes ideas like earning lots of money in order to give it all away.
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