The man who has cast himself as one of the Democratic Party’s emergent power players found his company in shambles—forced to sell to its biggest rival—on Election Day.
Suffering from a liquidity crunch after a run in which users pulled nearly $6 billion from the company, according to Reuters, Sam Bankman-Fried was forced into an emergency sale to a rival company, Binance. The announcement of FTX’s acquisition prompted Bitcoin to plummet to two-year lows.
It's a stunning reversal for the 30-year-old who donated over $5 million to Joe Biden's campaign in 2020 and who just three months ago was vaunted as a potential savior for Democrats in the midterm elections. "Some Democrats see Bankman-Fried’s investments and engagement as the thing that could help them hold back a red midterm wave," Politico reported in August.
Bankman-Fried had suggested he might donate as much as $1 billion in the midterms and 2024 election, a figure that would have made him the largest political donor in American history. While he started the 2022 election season doling out $37 million to liberal groups and candidates—he was the second-largest Democratic donor of the midterm elections behind liberal financier George Soros—he closed his wallet in October, telling reporters that his plan to spend $1 billion was "a dumb quote on my part."
