As the FTX crash and Sam Bankman-ascent Fried's to prominence unfold, the community is divided on SBF's policies.
SBF lent $43 million to crypto news media outlet TheBlock and contributed to well-known political candidates' election campaigns to rebrand him as the next crypto messiah.
To rise to prominence in the industry as the high-pitched drama surrounding the FTX collapse and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried gradually plays out.
SBF invested heavily in reshaping his image as the next crypto messiah, lending $43 million to the crypto news media company The Block and contributing to well-known political candidates' election campaigns.
Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old cryptocurrency wunderkind, has wasted tens of millions of dollars over the past year in an effort to change how Washington and the rest of the world perceive cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
He created the leading cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which was reportedly valued at $32 billion, in just three years. In the midterm elections, he rose from relative obscurity to finish as the second-largest Democratic donor, gaining tremendous political clout in the process thanks to a handful of extremely powerful officials.
The founder and former CEO of FTX gave about $40 million to Democrats this election cycle, second only to George Soros, who distributed about $128 million, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit organisation based in Washington, D.C.
When asked if the now-incarcerated founder "bought Washington" — using the term to refer to buying political power through donations — U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry acknowledged the fact by saying "he [SBF] tried" in a recent interview on CNBC's episode of Squawk Box.
In SBF's interview with Vox, Patrick focuses on the fact that it demonstrates that "he was a manipulator of world-class capacity and he's trying to pull off something that was light-touch regulation for his platform."
Patrick says that, when discussing Bankman-real Fried's motivation for gaining political clout, He collaborated with the CFTC and the Securities Exchange Commission to find a system of commodity regulation that would work for his platform. Therefore, I'm trying to strike the right balance so that consumers won't be taken advantage of by FTX's successor.
However, it doesn't seem like everything is going well for the founder of FTX's political aspirations because few of the political candidates he donated money to have reimbursed him. Nearly $1.2 million of Bankman-political Fried's donations, or about 3% of all his campaign donations, were returned or donated again in total.
Things seem very dismal for SBF, formerly the bright light of cryptocurrency, now that the SEC has accused him of fraud just hours before his Congressional hearing on late Monday evening.
In the US, punishments of more than 10 years in prison are possible for misleading investors.
