Sam Bankman-Fried could spend up to $1B in 2024 to thwart Trump comeback

cointelegraph.com:

The billionaire founder and CEO of theFTX cryptocurrency exchange Sam Bankman-Fried has revealed he intends to spend anywhere between $100 million and $1 billion to help influence the 2024 United States presidential election campaigns.

In a podcast interview on May 24 Bankman-Fried was asked how much money he might donate during the next presidential election cycle, answering he’d give “north of $100 million” with a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion if he were to bankroll the person running against former president Donald Trump.

According to the government watchdog OpenSecrets, which tracks data on campaign finance and lobbying, a $1 billion donation would break existing records multiple times over.

The largest individual political donors are currently the Republican business owners Sheldon and Miriam Adelson who spent $218 million in 2020.

Bankman-Fried continued by saying the amount he donates is “super contingent” and “really dependent on exactly who's running where and for why,” adding it’s likely he would spread the money across multiple organizations.

He said one of the most important issues to him is preventing the next pandemic which he thinks would cost “tens of billions of dollars.”

“The United States has both a big opportunity and big responsibility to the world to shepherd the West in a powerful but responsible manner,” and added that everything the country does has “massive ripple effects on what the future looks like.”

Bankman-Fried has donated millions to politicians in the past contributing $5.2 million in donations to now-President Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign.

Related: Sam Bankman-Fried: The crypto whale who wants to give billions away

He also backs the political action committee (PAC) “Protect Our Future” set