Disgraced cryptocurrency titan Sam Bankman-Fried met with senior White House officials at least four times this year to impact crypto policy, before FTX collapsed, Bloomberg reports.
Bankman-Fried met most recently on Sept. 8 with Steve Ricchetti, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden and, earlier, on April 22 and May 12, according to White House officials and visitor logs.
SBF also met with Bruce Reed, another Biden aide, on May 13. Other executives of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, also held meetings with officials at the White House.
SBF’s brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, who ran a foundation overseen by the two brothers, Guarding Against Pandemics, joined Sam Bankman-Fried at the May 13 meeting with Reed, and attended at least four other meetings at the White House this year.
SBF became a Washington, D.C., fixture in recent years, flying up from FTX offices in the Bahamas, to testify before Congress and meet with regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, along with White House officials. Bankman-Fried also was the second-biggest individual donor in the 2022 election cycle, backing Democrats.
One of SBF’s former top lieutenants, Ryan Salame, was also a big political backer, of Republicans.
The Bankman-Frieds discussed the cryptocurrency industry and pandemic prevention in their meetings with Biden aides, but not politics, an official tells Bloomberg, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The FTX founder, now facing criminal charges for the collapse of his company and the overnight evaporation of its $32 billion in assets, was a proponent of cryptocurrency regulation. SBF was also known for touting FTX and its policies as ethical.
A spokesperson for Sam Bankman-Fried declined to comment to Bloomberg.
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