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Elon Musk has suggested that disgraced crypto exchange billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried donated more than $1billion to Democrats before FTX‘s collapse.
Musk’s allegation, if true, would mean SBF donated significantly more than the initially reported $40million figure to Democratic politicians, ahead of his business’s total meltdown.
On Friday, healthcare tech startup CEO Will Mandis tweeted: ‘SBF donating $40m to not go to jail for stealing $10b+ is one of the highest ROI trades of all time,’ referring to the known number in donations to Democratic politicians.
Musk then weighed and responded, ‘That’s just the publicly disclosed number. His actual support of Dem elections is probably over $1B. The money went somewhere, so where did it go?’
Prior to the implosion of FTX late last month – which is largely being blamed on the questionable sharing of funds between FTX and crypto trading firm Alameda Research – SBF had a close relationship with the party in power in Washington, DC.
He has testified before Congress, met with lawmakers and regulators and donated heavily to left-of-center media operations, which has led to the observation by some that his alleged crimes have been handled more gently than is appropriate by the mainstream media.
Prior to the undoing of his company, SBF pledged to give $1billion to political candidates.
Musk, who has been vocally critical of SBF, has now claimed that the failed crypto boss donated more than $1billion to Democratic politicians
SBF has claimed to have donated equal amounts of money to Democrats and Republicans. Prior to the implosion of his crypto exchange, he kept cozy relationships with powerful DC political figures
It has also emerged that SBF was one of the largest Democratic donors in recent cycles, spending a reported $36 million during the last midterm election primarily via the Protect Our Future Pac.
Bankman-Fried claims he donated to both major political parties, though that his donations to the Republicans were dark, meaning publicly untraceable.
He said during an interview with Tiffany Fong that he donated ‘about the same amount of money’ to both Democrats and Republicans.
He claims to have used a loophole in the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling to keep his Republican donations discreet because the ‘liberal’ media would ‘freak the f*** out.’
‘I’ve been their third biggest Republican donor this year,’ he said during the interview released last week.
Though he was Democrats’ second biggest donor during the last campaign cycle, it was recently revealed that SBF donated at least $1million to Senate Republicans mere weeks before the dramatic combustion of FTX.
Musk, however, is now publicly contending that SBF donated a significantly higher number to ‘Dem elections,’ though it is unclear from where Musk is sourcing his information.
Bankman-Fried was spotted last week by DailyMail.com on the balcony of his $30m Bahamas penthouse. He said he no longer lives there but remains somewhere in the Bahamas
Musk publicly questioned exactly where SBF’s alleged $1billion in donations went. He has also been critical of the media’s coverage of SBF’s downfall
SBF has been on a recent media blitz as he stands accused of funneling upwards of $10billion from FTX users into Alameda Research.
Last week, he spoke to Good Morning America from his $30million Bahamian penthouse. During the interview, he said that he ‘wasn’t trying’ to manage risk at FTX.
‘I think that there is something even deeper wrong there which is I wasn’t even trying. Like I wasn’t spending any time or effort trying to manage risk on FTX,’ he told GMA.
Bankman-Fried added that if he’d spent ‘an hour a day thinking about risk management’ then his company would not have imploded.
‘I think I stopped working as hard for a bit. You know, honestly if I look back on myself, I think I got a little cocky, I mean more than a little bit and I think part of me like, you know, felt like we made it.’
The 30-year-old also appeared to try and dodge questions about what he knew regarding FTX funds being shuffled around to pay debts for Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by Bankman-Fried and run by his ex-girlfriend, Carolyn Ellison.
Bankman-Fried is currently under investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over reports he helped funnel $10 million from FTX to Alameda.
The crypto CEO whose troubled FTX sparked market panic: Hoodie-wearing vegan once worth ‘$25BILLION’ who sleeps four hours a night
Sam Bankman-Fried
Sam Bankman-Fried, a vegan who sleeps four hours a night, had become a public face of crypto money, with a personal fortune estimated at nearly $25 billion, which according to Forbes magazine has since shrunk to $100,000.
The success of FTX allowed the platform to forge prestigious partnerships, notably with American football legend Tom Brady and former supermodel Gisele Bundchen, and it featured comedian Larry David in a Super Bowl television advertisement.
Almost always appearing with a hoodie and a dark T-shirt, Bankman-Fried has pledged to donate almost all of his fortune to his favored causes, like animal welfare and the fight against global warming.
The son of Stanford Law School professors and a graduate of the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he worked as a broker on Wall Street before turning to cryptocurrencies in 2017.
Bankman-Fried moved the company to the Bahamas, where taxes are almost nonexistent, saying the Caribbean nation is ‘one of the few countries that has a comprehensive licensing regime for cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges.’
He has been a vocal advocate for smoother access to the crypto market for the general public, particularly in the United States.
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