FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried regrets ‘dumb quote’ about giving $1 billion to political races
Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and chief executive officer of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, speaks during the Institute of International Finance (IIF) annual membership meeting in Washington, DC, on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022.
Ting Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is backing down from a previous comment suggesting he could spend $1 billion or more in races from now through the 2024 election.
In May, the 30-year-old said on the Pushkin Industries podcast, “What’s Your Problem,” that he expected to give “north of $100 million” in the next presidential election and had a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion. In an interview with Politico’s Morning Money this week, however, the founder of the global cryptocurrency exchange FTX called it a “dumb quote.”
“I think my messaging was sort of sloppy and inconsistent in some cases,” continued Bankman-Fried, who also founded trading firm Alameda Research.
Instead, Bankman-Fried has reportedly invested around $40 million in political action committees and campaigns this year in the run-up to midterm elections, with most of that money going to Democratic candidates. The FTX CEO has been the driving force behind the Protect Our Future PAC, which has raised more than $28 million thus far — and could move the needle in upcoming House races.
But for now, Bankman-Fried is hitting pause on his political campaign spending, telling Politico that, “At some point, when you’ve given your message to voters, there’s just not a whole lot more you can do.”
“You can spend more time on it, and more messaging, more money, more anything else, [but] you’re not accomplishing anything more,” the FTX CEO told Politico.
The crypto market has tanked since Bankman-Fried first pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars earlier this year.
Bitcoin, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, is down more than 50% in the last six months, and over 70% since hitting its all-time high in Nov. 2021. Meanwhile, the crypto market as a whole went from a market cap of around $3 trillion less than a year ago, to less than $1 trillion today.
For his part, Bankman-Fried has been spending a lot of money the last few months to prop up the digital asset industry during the 2022 crypto winter. The quant trader-turned-CEO has bailed out multiple crypto firms to protect against a wider contagion effect across the sector, and Bankman-Fried told CNBC in September that FTX still has another $1 billion to deploy.
Bankman-Fried was also interested in helping to fund Elon Musk’s proposed takeover of Twitter, according to personal text messages that were released recently as part of Twitter’s lawsuit to force Musk to complete the deal. At one point, the billionaire was ready to commit up to $8 billion, according to a message to Musk from Bankman-Fried’s “collaborator,” professor Will MacAskill. However, he never made a formal offer, according to reports.
Meanwhile, U.S. regulators and politicians have been increasingly turning their attention to crypto policy in recent months, as a spate of bankruptcies and crypto bank runs have eroded confidence in the emerging asset class.
Last month, for example, the Biden White House released its first-ever framework on what crypto regulation in the U.S. should look like — including ways to crack down on fraud in the digital asset space.
— CNBC’s Brian Schwartz contributed to this report.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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