FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried says he will not Spend $1 Billion on Political Races

In May, the CEO of FTX trading, Sam Bankman-Fried, made claims that he expected to spend up to $1 billion in political donations in the run-up to the 2024 United States presidential election. According to data from OpenSecrets, if Sam could have done this political spending, then he would have become the largest political donor.

Now, Bankman-Fried, a crypto billionaire, is putting his foot on the brakes and saying that he will not spend $1 billion. This week at Politico’s Morning Money podcast, he said about his previous comments on campaign spending that it was a dumb quote. Moreover, he said that he thinks his messaging was sloppy and inconsistent in some cases.

In anticipation of the 2022 midterm elections, Bankman-Fried had reportedly raised around $40 million, to which Protect Our Future PAC had donated $28 million. Most of this fund had gone to Democratic candidates, such as over $10 million of the PAC’s donations had gone to a single Democratic congressional candidate, Oregon’s Carrick Flynn.

Bankman-Fried had previously touted these donations as a key tool in achieving progress in the billionaire’s policy areas of choice, but now he says that he is abstaining from any further political spending. On the podcast, he said that at some point, when you have given your message to voters, there’s not a whole lot more you can do.

However, he did not clarify that he would turn the spigot back on in the ramp-up to the 2024 presidential election. He also indicated that his experience of spending on politics had led him to re-evaluate a once general election-focused strategy.

Bankman-Fried said that he thinks primaries are more important, and he could try and talk about pandemic preparedness in a general election. But most voters are gonna say that’s cool, but like, he’s a Democrat or a Republican. Moreover, he said that’s not going to move the needle enough for me to go over the other issues.