Do you feel like the Biden Administration is doing a good job?
How do you feel when you see Sam Bankman-Fried, billionaire owner of FTX, contributes 2 billion dollars to Biden’s campaign fund?
Seems a bit counter-intuitive, no?
Or is it?
But The Dems Don’t Like Crypto
By in large, you’d be right about that.
Although there are certainly Republicans who oppose it as well, your high profile members of congress who target crypto, your Brad Shermans, Maxine Waters’s and Elizabeth Warrens of the world, are on the political left.
Most of your most public support for crypto, though becoming more bi-partisan as time goes on, is from the right. Your Pat Toomeys Ted Cruz’s and Cynthia Lummis’s of the world.
So why would Bankman-Fried donate so much to the democratic party? Between his companies, FTX and Alameda Research (SBF owns 90% of it) donated over 11 million USD to the Biden campaign in 2020.
I of course, have a theory.
It’s Not What Most People Think
The Biden administration is a bit hard to love right now.
From a corporation standpoint, you’re almost always going to go one way or the other every time.
From a pleb standpoint, your dislike of the right is the only thing keeping you going right now. Constantly making excuses for an administration that hasn’t gotten a lot right lately is just exhausting after awhile.
Remember, we stay apolitical here. It doesn’t serve us to be wrapped up in this stuff emotionally, but policy does matter, so we need to at least be paying attention.
But donating to the campaign, and maintaining constant contributions, and being very open about it, is a next-level tactic that more crypto companies should consider.
Let’s break it down further.
Comply and Die
Over the past few years, we’ve seen an interesting phenomenon take place.
Complying with the federal govt and the SEC, while seeming like the right thing to do if you’re a centralized platform, has done almost nothing but backfire.
It often makes you the FIRST corporations to fall under intense scrutiny and heavy-handed regulations, as the current administration looks to make examples out of those foolish enough to take initiative and follow the rules.
Like seriously, telling the SEC publicly on national TV to go fuck themselves while flipping your ballsack up and down would serve you better than doing exactly what they tell you to do instead.
Consider Coinbase and BlockFi. Massively compliant from the start. Currently, it would be hard to argue there are any companies in the US getting it worse from a regulatory angle than these two.
So why are these two getting pushed through the wringer, and FTX is having an unabated run through the fields of prosperity and growth?
The other two forgot rule #1. And it was the same thing Zuckerberg forgot with Libra.
You gotta grease the palms first.
For the Win
SBF’s donations are a prime example of a beautiful strategy.
Why donate to one side before the election? We knew it was going to be a close race, why put so much on one pony?
Think about it.
If Trump would have won, and had a locked congress, or even a red congress, then so what?
They would have been less likely to punish crypto over time than the Dems would anyway, so you’re probably in no danger.
And by making your current donations so loud and public, you could easily claim discrimination for being targeted over other companies.
This is all assuming a Republican administration takes the time and effort to go full-on assault on crypto, which was unlikely.
It was a win-win.
Now, with a Democratic administration who wants to go after crypto, SBF ensured that if they were ever going to go after FTX, that at the very worst, they would be the last to be affected.
You wouldn’t just want to lose 11 Billion dollars in contributions for no good reason, would you?
When you can simply point your gun at all the other companies who don’t contribute to your campaign?
This was a next-level move that shows the savvy of SBF, if his previous moves weren’t evidence of that enough.
Conclusion
If you have personal feelings about SBF, you need to put them aside for this one. This is all about strategy. And if you think he’s a dick, just know, that if you’re going to become a titan of the way we’re all going to do money some day, you sure as shit better have a prickish streak in you.
Speaking of, I would laugh so hard if we switch to a Republican administration in 2024 — and SBF immediately decides to start donating to them instead.
Next-next level move IMO.
— VP