Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, revealed that he may donate up to $1 billion to influence the 2024 United States presidential election campaign.
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"I would guess north of $100 million. How much more than that, I don't know. It really depends on what happens. It really depends on who's running for what where, and these things are super random, " Bankman-Fried said in an interview on the Pushkin Industries podcast.
The 30-year-old billionaire, who has historically leaned Democrat, was among the top-20 biggest donors to Joe Biden's 2020 US presidential campaign, contributing $5.2 million to help Biden win over former President Donald Trump.
When asked if he would be willing to donate $1 billion if Trump decides to run for re-election, the FTX chief said the figure is "something worth looking at."
"I would hate to say a hard ceiling because who knows what's going to happen between now and then — but at least as a soft ceiling," he said.
According to OpenSecrets, a website tracking campaign finance and lobbying data, the $1 billion donation would be the largest donation ever made during the 2020 presidential campaign.
The largest individual political donors are currently Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, who donated $218 million to Republicans, and Michael Bloomberg, who donated $152 million to Democrats
Fried beyond bankman-politics
Political preferences aside, Bankman-Friday also stressed that one of the most important issues is to prevent the next pandemic, which, according to him, will cost "tens of billions of dollars".
"I think I look at political parties a lot less from that perspective and a lot more about sensible governance and the advertising that I care about most," he said.
For him, "the United States has both a great opportunity and a great responsibility to the world to fill the West in a powerful but responsible way" because what the country does "has a huge impact on what the future looks like," Bankman added. Fried. He recently donated more than $10 million to support Democratic candidate Carrick Flynn in last week's primary for a congressional seat in Oregon, mainly because Flynn wants to focus on pandemic preparedness. However, his candidate lost by a huge margin.
"I've had a lot of those opportunities, and if I were to do it again, I'd do it a little differently than the last time. But basically, I think this one was well thought out," he said. "If you're donating to a political race that you think your candidate has a 99 percent chance of winning, you're definitely doing something wrong."
source content:https://decrypt.co/101302/sam-bankman-fried-to-spend-up-to-1b-on-donations-for-2024-us-elections