The former CEO of the now-collapsed FTX exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, was scheduled to meet with senior White House officials four times over the past year. The last of such events took place two months before the platform collapsed.
Visitor logs reveal Sam Bankman-Fried activity
One of the common customs of the White House, is the monthly disclosure of the so-called Visitor’s Log. It shows records of meetings that took place in the immediate vicinity of the US President. The ledger shows that Sam Bankman-Fried, in 2022, visited presidential advisor Steve Ricchetti twice. These took place on April 22 and May 12. And on May 13, the SBF was the guest of presidential policy advisor Charlotte Butash.
In turn, as reported by the Bloomberg news agency, another, this time unofficial, meeting was to take place on September 8. Its actors were again Sam Bankman-Fried and Steve Ricchetti. One looks in vain for information about this event in the Visitors’ Diary. The subject matter of the talks also seems mysterious.
Reasons for Bankman-Fried’s visits to the White House
Although Bankman-Fried resided mainly in the Bahamas, he visited the White House relatively frequently. He was allegedly a lobbyist for the cryptocurrency market. Bloomberg reports that his meetings were based mainly on the topic of virtual assets and their exchange. Pandemic issues were also to be discussed.
He was also expected to push for redirecting the attention of regulators, from centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, to decentralized financial platforms (DeFi). Lending protocols such as MakerDAO were also on target.
According to multiple sources, Bankman-Fried has been a significant donor to Democrats. However, in an interview, the man himself indicated that he had donated roughly the same amount of money to both parties, with donations to the Republicans, allegedly of a less official nature.
At the moment it is difficult to confirm this information. However, the potential implications of the Bankman-Fried meetings appear to be interesting. In the context of the collapse of the FTX exchange, this creates a political cloud of uncertainty that extends to the entire crypto market.
Cryptocurrency market with a dramatic end to the year
The year 2022 will be remembered by cryptocurrency investors for a very long time. A series of collapses that took place during its course caused a lot of fear and uncertainty. In addition to disasters such as the collapse of Terra Luna and Celsius Network, there was also the complete collapse of one seemingly solid entity, which was considered to be the FTX exchange. Many analysts hope that clearing the market of unstable entities has the right to result in a better 2023.
