FTX CEO Won’t Spend $1B on Political Races as Claimed Earlier

• Oregon’s Carrick Flynn went on to lose his primary race in May.
• Both Flynn and Bankman-Fried are outspoken proponents of effective altruism.

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX and a crypto billionaire, made the audacious assertion in May that he will spend $1 billion or more on political contributions before the 2024 US presidential election. According to information from OpenSecrets, if Bankman-Fried had spent that much on politics in the most recent election. He would have been the single greatest political contributor by a factor of four.

The billionaire has slammed on the brakes after putting his foot in his mouth. Bankman-Fried said last week on the Morning Money podcast for Politico, “That was a dumb quote.” He was referring to his prior views about campaign spending. “I think my messaging was sloppy and inconsistent in some cases.”

No More Political Contributions

As of this writing, the founder of Alameda Research has apparently collected nearly to $40 million in preparation for the 2022 midterm elections, the majority of which has come from the Protect Our Future PAC, which has contributed over $28 million. Democrats have benefited from this overwhelmingly.

The PAC donated more than $10 million to a single Democratic congressional candidate this year, Oregon’s Carrick Flynn, who went on to lose his primary in May. Both Flynn and Bankman-Fried are outspoken proponents of effective altruism, a philosophical movement that seeks to give more weight to causes that have a net beneficial effect on the greatest number of people throughout the world.

The former proponent of political contributions as a means to advance the billionaire’s preferred policy areas of crypto regulation and pandemic preparation, Bankman-Fried now seems to have changed his tune. He claims to currently not making any political contributions.

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