FTX CEO could donate up to $1 billion for US elections in 2024

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of crypto exchange FTX, in the Bahamas. (Image: Bloomberg)

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of FTX cryptocurrency exchange, said he could donate up to $1 billion in the next United States presidential election in 2024, more than four times the highest amount contributed last time.

“I would guess north of a $100 million,” Bankman-Fried said on The Pushkin Industries podcast, when asked how much he would give in the next US election cycle. “As for how much north of that, I don’t know. It really does depend on what happens. It’s really dependent on exactly who’s running where for what, and these things are super contingent.”

Asked if he was prepared to donate $1 billion, Bankman-Fried said, “Yeah, I think that’s a decent, like, thing to look at as a — I would hate to say hard ceiling, because who knows what’s going to happen between now and then — but as at least sort of as a soft ceiling.”

A donation of $1 billion would exceed the largest contribution made in the presidential polls of 2020 multiple times over, according to OpenSecrets, a website tracking campaign finance and lobbying data.

In 2020, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson backed the Republicans with a $218 million donation, and Michael Bloomberg donated $152 million to the Democrats, making them the largest individual donors to political parties. The FTX founder backed Joe Biden in 2020.

Bankman-Fried, 30, launched FTX in 2019. The exchange and its US operations hit a combined $40 billion valuation in January, according to Forbes, which assessed his net worth at $21.1 billion as of May 26.

Bankman-Fried also stressed on the importance of good governance to prevent a COVID-19 like pandemic in the future, costing governments “tens of billions of dollars.”

“I think that I’m going to be looking a lot less at political parties from that perspective and a lot more about sane governance and ads for the things that I care the most about,” the FTX chief said.

He said the US has both a big opportunity and a big responsibility to the world to shepherd the West in a powerful but responsible manner since everything the country does has “massive ripple effects on what the future looks like.”