FTX, Democrats, and Ukraine
A massive Biden/Democrat political money laundering operation exposed.
Who is Sam Bankman-Fried and why should you care? Long story short: he runs/ran one of the largest known political money laundering operations in world history that helped get Biden and many other Democrats elected.
MONEY LAUNDERING 101
In coordination with China and the Biden administration, billions of dollars have been sent to Ukraine intended to aid the “war effort,” but instead that money was funneled into the FTX crypto $FTT, which crypto was then donated back to Democrat (communist) candidates in the 2021-2022 election cycle in one of the most brazen ponzi schemes ever. In other words, the Biden administration has taken U.S. taxpayer dollars in the name of global peace and used those dollars to fund Democrat campaigns in America…
This might be the biggest story of the year.
Refer to the following image as you read through this article. It shows the price history for FTX’s token, $FTT, with significant dates highlighted.
Contents.
About Sam Bankman-Fried
Political Contributions
Timeline of Events
FTX Losers
Interesting Correlations
Additional References
About Sam Bankman-Fried.
Sam Bankman-Fried was born in 1990 on Stanford University’s campus to two prominent Standford professors, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried. He attended MIT and graduated with a degree in physics and a minor in mathematics. He is the co-founder of the Futures Exchange (FTX) cryptocurrency exchange that has been making recent tsunamis in the news and is arguably the sole reason why cryptocurrency markets tanked just after the 2022 midterm elections. He currently lives in the Bahamas with about 10 roommates and is allegedly addicted to the video game League of Legends, though an investigation by the Financial Times reported that he is “average-to-bad” in his win ratio performance. 🤣 [source]
He is a supporter of Effective Altruism and a self-described Utilitarianist, both of which support foolish ideas such as climate change/protecting nature, public health dictates, and authoritarian control for the greater good. [Interpretation] Essentially, he believes in doing what he thinks is best for mankind without regard to legality, morality, or ethics, and without considering the views or beliefs of others or any harm that could be caused.
He is a member of Giving What We Can, an effective altruism-associated organization that basically raises money to donate to “effective charities,” but being an effective altruism-associated organization, those charities are restricted to ones that focus on imaginary issues like climate change, green energy, and pandemic preparedness.
In recent days (with the snowball beginning on November 2, 2022) Bankman-Fried has made headlines due to the rapid implosion/rug pull of FTX after documents revealed Bankman-Fried’s quantitative trading firm, Alameda Research, held a large stake of $FTT tokens (the cryptocurrency for FTX) showing a closer relationship between FTX and Alameda than had previously been known and has been involved in questionable lobbying practices. More and more evidence continues to pour in revealing the details of how this elaborate elite ponzi scheme worked. But the general idea is that the Biden administration sends U.S. taxpayer dollars to Ukraine for the “war efforts,” but instead of using the funds for war efforts they’re dumped into FTX, and then FTX is donated back to U.S. Democrat campaigns. In other words, the Biden administration is directly funneling U.S. taxpayer dollars into Democrat campaigns…
Political Contributions.
2010.
Bankman-Fried makes his first political donation while still a student at the age of 18 to Democrat Michael Bennet of Colorado.
2020.
Bankman-Fried contributes $5.2 million to two Democrat SPACs becoming the 2nd largest donor to Joe Biden’s campaign, falling behind Michael Bloomberg.
2021-2022.
Bankman-Fried was the 2nd largest individual donor to Democratic causes in the 2021-2022 election cycle with donations totaling $39.8 million, trailing only behind George Soros. At least $27 million of this went directly to the Protect Our Future PAC and $6 million went to the House Majority SPAC. Another $29 million was donated to the same causes by two FTX executives. [source]
Protect Our Future PAC. Bankman-Fried supplied a majority of the PAC’s initial $10 million funding, with a mission of supporting “lawmakers who play the long game on policymaking in areas like pandemic preparedness and planning.” [Opinion] In other words, supporting lawmakers who push imaginary issues. By May 2022, he had supplied $13 million of the $14 million raised. By June 2022, his contributions exceeded $23 million. The PAC donated more than $24 million to Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterm cycle, including the following:
Spent $1 million in support of Shontel Brown helping her win re-election in Ohio’s 11th congressional district. This was 25% of Brown’s total support.
Spent at least $2 million in support of Lucy McBath helping her win re-election in Georgia’s 6th congressional district.
Spent at least $7 million in support of Carrick Flynn, who was defeated in her run for Oregon’s 6th congressional district after Protect Our Future was accused of coordinating with Flynn’s campaign, an action illegal under federal law. Though PoF denies the allegation, they are accused of a strategy called “red-boxing,” where the campaign highlights specific language or verbiage in a red box on their website and the PoF replicates the language exactly in its advertising.
Protect Our Future also transferred millions to other groups, including ~$900k to the Justice Unites Us PAC on April 1, 2022, ~$6 million to the Nancy Pelosi-aligned House Majority PAC, ~$500k to the Churck Schumer-tied Senate Majority PAC, and ~$2 million to the GMI PAC. GMI turned around and transferred $5.25 million to its affiliated company Web3 Forward, which spent more than $4 million of that on media advertisements for several Democratic candidates. Candidates that benefited from this scheme included Senate candidate John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, House candidate Jasmine Crockett in Texas, House C=candidate Jonathan Jackson in Illinois, and House candidate Adam Hollier in Michigan. [source]
Bankman-Fried also sent hundreds of thousands to several other groups including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. [source]
Timeline of Events.
Summer of 2010.
As a senior in high school, Bankman-Fried was sent to the Canada/USA Mathcamp, an intense, military-style mathematics camp [source]. Bankman-Fried’s future FTX co-founder and Google employee Gary Wang will attend this same camp in 2011.
Summer of 2013.
Bankman-Fried begins working at Jane Street Capital as an intern while still attending MIT. After graduation, he became employed full-time.
September 2017.
Bankman-Fried quits working at Jane Street Capital and moves to Berkeley to work as the Director of Development at the Centre for Effective Altruism. This lasted only two months, from October to November 2017.
November 2017. ⭐
Bankman-Fried co-founds Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm, with Tara Mac Aulay.
January 2018.
Bankman-Fried takes advantage of the difference in prices in markets (viz. arbitrage) moving up to $25 million Bitcoin a day between the Japanese and American markets.
Late 2018.
Bankman-Fried moves Alameda Research (and himself) to Hong Kong.
April 25, 2019.
Joe Biden announces his presidential campaign.
May 2019. ⭐
Sam Bankman-Fried co-founds the FTX cryptocurrency exchange with Gary Wang (a Google employee that attended the same summer mathematics camp as Bankman-Fried). Its cryptocurrency coin’s symbol is $FTT.
FTX initially trades at ~$1.20/coin.
November 2019.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao purchases a 20% stake in FTX.
November 8, 2020. ⭐
Joe Biden steals the 2020 Election.
FTX trades at ~$3.50/coin with a market cap of $330 million. Its value begins skyrocketing as soon as Biden is elected.
May 2021.
FTX reaches its first major high at ~$60.00/coin and a market cap nearing $6 billion. It tumbles losing nearly 50% of its value over the next two months as the cryptocurrency (and stock) market crashes. Bankman-Fried accuses the Federal Reserve of being responsible for the crash. [source]
July 2021.
FTX raises $900 million ($18 billion valuation) from over 60 investors.
Binance divests its shares in FTX. A portion of this divestment is paid for with $FTT tokens, which become listed on Binance’s exchange.
These two events send FTX to the moon, reaching ~$85.00/coin and a market cap nearing $10 BILLION by mid-September!
August 2021.
Bankman-Fried’s ownership in Alameda Research raises to 90%.
September 2021.
FTX moves its headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas.
October 2021.
FTX raises capital at a valuation of $25 billion from investors, including Singapore’s Temasek and Tiger Global.
January 2022.
FTX raises $400 million in Series C funding at a $32 billion valuation. Analysts question the valuation. [source]
January 14, 2022.
FTX announces a $2 billion venture fund, FTX Ventures. This site goes offline without explanation in November 2022 after the liquidity crisis begins.
Bankman-Fried provides a majority of the initial $10 million funding for a new Democratic SPAC called Protect Our Future with the goal of supporting “lawmakers who play the long game on policymaking in areas like pandemic preparedness and planning.” [source] See Campaign Contributions above for more details about this SPAC and its contributions.
January 27, 2022.
FTX reports it is valued at $8 billion after raising $400 million in its first funding round from investors including SoftBank and Temasek.
January 31.
FTX raises $400 million from investors (valuated at $32 billion).
February 2022.
Bankman-Fried says that his political contributions are not aimed at influencing his policy goals for the cryptocurrency ecosystem despite FTX circulating a list of suggestions to policymakers at the same time.
In an interview, Bankman-Fried says he wishes the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) would take a larger role in regulating the cryptocurrency industry. He then proceeds to lobby congress pushing for regulations through the proposed Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA), which was seen as being very favorable to FTX but catastrophically harmful to the broader industry, especially harmful to the cryptocurrency’s standard model of decentralization. (In other words, he wanted to destroy the Bitcoin model).
February 24, 2022. 💥
Russia invades Ukraine. [source]
February 25, 2022.
Biden sends $350 million in lethal military equipment to Ukraine.
FTX announces it will give $25 to any Ukrainian that registers on their platform. [source]
March 3, 2022.
The Washington Post reports that Ukraine’s government has gathered more than $42 million in cryptocurrency donations over the previous 5 days. “The challenge is how the country cashes in on these assets to fund its war needs.”
March 8, 2022.
FTX announces they are working with the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance to help Ukraine convert its cryptocurrencies into fiat currency. [source]
March 12, 2022.
Biden sends another $200 million in arms and equipment to Ukraine.
March 14, 2022.
With more than $80 million crypto already donated, Ukraine launches a website Aid For Ukraine (no longer online) that allows direct cryptocurrency donations to Ukraine. This initiative is funded by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, FTX, and Everstake. It allowed for donations of BTC, ETH, ESDT (TRC-20), DOT, SOL, DOGE, and XMR. This enabled Ukraine to convert crypto donated to them directly into fiat currency. [source] Interestingly, this site was created on October 7, 2019… (long con?) [source]
March 16, 2022.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy legalizes cryptocurrency in Ukraine after receiving more than $100 million in crypto donations from foreign sources (ironic, since he rejected an identical bill in September 2021). [source]
March 29, 2022.
Bankman-Fried texts Elon Musk with an interest in investing in Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Musk never ended up taking Bankman-Fried up on his offer.
April 22, 2022.
Ukraine’s central bank bans Ukrainians from purchasing cryptocurrency using the nation’s local currency and invokes martial law. Ukrainians can only purchase crypto using foreign currency up to a maximum value of ~$3,400 USD per month. [source]
May 12, 2022.
Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd., which is majority-owned by Bankman-Fried, purchases 7.6% of Robinhood Markets Inc. stock.
June 4, 2022.
FTX signs a $135 million deal for naming rights of the American professional basketball team Miami Heat’s home court (a multipurpose arena). Miami-Day County has since announced it will rename the arena in light of FTX’s crimes. [source]
July 1, 2022.
FTX makes a deal with an option to buy BlockFi for up to $240 million. The deal included a $400 million credit facility for BlockFi.
July 22, 2022.
FTX offers a partial bailout for the bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital. Voyager calls it a “low-ball bid.”
August 19, 2022.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) publishes a cease-and-desist letter to FTX for making “false and misleading representations” about claiming to have FDIC insurance after FTX.US’s president, Brett Harrison, tweeted statements claiming to be insured. After the FDIC’s letter, the tweet was deleted and Bankman-Fried tweeted that FTX does not in fact have FDIC insurance.
September 14 2022. 🔥
Bloomberg reports on a potentially unethical relationship between FTX and Alameda, saying that not only did Alameda function as a market maker for FTX in the exchange’s early days but that they have continued to fulfill that role ever since, and that such a relationship would never have been possible had there been traditional regulatory oversight between the two firms.
September 19-20.
Bankman-Fried attended a Clinton Foundation Global Initiative annual meeting as CEO of FTX [source]. This meeting’s agenda included: brainstorming how to more effectively profit off future pandemics while also utilizing their zombie slaves at the community level to terrorize citizens; introducing the “CGI Greenhouse” project, which invests in “socially-minded entrepreneurs and innovators”; brainstorming ways to make abortion a climate change issue; strategies for manipulating children in educational and healthchare (psychiatric) settings to throw away all semblence of God-like morality and ethics; brainstorming ways to better utilize their hive-mind to drive the future; and more. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also in attendance, listed as a “Refugee.” [source]
September 26, 2022.
FTX.US wins an auction for the digital assets of the bankrupt cryptocurrency brokerage Voyager Digital. The deal was valued at $1.31 billion in Voyager-held crypto and $111 million in additional consideration, subject to approval by the bankruptcy courts and Voyager’s creditors.
September 27, 2022.
FTX.US president Brett Harrison announces he is stepping down from his active role at the exchange but would remain in an advisory role.
October 2022. 🔥
Texas reports that it is investigating FTX for allegedly selling unregistered securities.
November 2, 2022 💥
CoinDesk reports that they have private documents that show that a significant portion of Alameda Research’s assets were in $FTT. They reported there were $5.1 billion in $FTT tokens in circulation and that Alameda’s balance sheet listed $3.66 billion of “unlocked FTT",” $2.16 billion of “FTT collateral,” and $292 million of “locked FTT.”
November 6, 2022.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweets that his firm intends to sell all of its holdings of $FTT that it had received as part of its divestment of its 20% equity stake in FTX, citing “recent revelations that came to light.”
Zhao’s tweet resulted in a rapid drop in value of $FTT leading to a 3-day bank run estimated at $6 billion putting FTX into a liquidity crisis.
November 7, 2022.
Bankman-Fried assures investors “FTX is fine. Assets are fine.”
November 8, 2022.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announces a non-binding agreement to purchase FTX due to its current liquidity crisis (the deal did not include FTX.US).
FTX loses ~90% of its estimated value in one day.
November 9, 2022.
Bloomberg doubts the Binance acquisition will go through due to FTX’s recent financial turbulence. A few hours later, Binance walks away from the acquisition citing reported mishandling of customer funds and pending investigations of FTX.
Bloomberg also reports that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are both investigating the nature of FTX’s connections to Bankman-Fried’s other holdings and its (mis)handling of client funds.
FTX halts processing withdrawals. Bankman-Fried claims the firm holds enough assets to cover its clients’ deposits but would need external funds to meet the demand for withdrawals due to the liquidity crisis. He claims FTX.US is unaffected by the crisis, but skeptical employees begun dumping assets.
Alameda’s website is taken down.
November 10, 2022.
Axios reports that FTX approached Kraken for a possible rescue deal. [source]
Bankman-Fried makes several statements, including (virtue signaling) taking responsibility for FTX’s failure and that he is still trying to save it, in addition to announcing Alameda Research is winding down trading and will close its doors.
FTX’s in-house legal counsel and compliance teams resign.
The team running the FTX Future Fund also resigns. Future Fund had committed $160 million in charitable grants and investments by September 1, 2022.
The Wall Street Journal cites anonymous sources claiming that Alameda Research owed FTX around $10 billion after FTX lent Alameda the funds to pay back loans taken out for investments Alameda had made and to make new investments.
The Securities Commission of the Bahamas freezes the assets of one FTX subsidiary, FTX Digital Markets Ltd., “and related parties,” and provisionally appoints an attorney as liquidator. Japan’s Financial Services Agency orders FTX Japan to suspend operations. The Australian subsidiary is also placed under administration.
BlockFi announces it is suspending operations as a result of FTX’s collapse.
Bankman-Fried resigns as FTX’s CEO and is replaced by John J. Ray III after telling employees in a staff memo he is seeking capital and just held talks with Justin Sun, founder of the Tron cryptocurrency.
Reuters reports Bankman-Fried is seeking to put together a rescue package of up to $9.4 billion for FTX.
November 11, 2022.
Alameda Research, FTX, FTX.US, and nearly 130 affiliated companies file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in Delaware. [source].
The New York Times cites anonymous sources claiming the exchange owes as much as $8 billion.
Bankman-Fried says that FTX and FTX.US intend to move the remaining funds into an offline “cold storage.”
Later in the day, US general counsel Ryne Miller reports that FTX expedited the transferring of funds to cold storage upon discovering unauthorized transactions occurring.
reports $473 million in funds were removed from FTX through “unauthorized transactions” and were quickly converted into $ETH, a method used by crypto thieves to thwart attempts to retrieve stolen funds. A person claiming to speak on behalf of FTX says in a Telegram chat that the “unauthorized transactions” was a “hack” and encourages users to delete their FTX mobile apps as a precaution. Kraken announces it is assisting in identifying the perpetrator.
The Twitter account, @unusual_whales, reports that FTX’s US wallets appear to be hacked, with over $600 million being removed from CoinDesk. FTX claims in its Telegram channel that it was hacked and instructs users to not install any new upgrades and to delete all FTX apps.
November 12, 2022.
The Wall Street Journal cites anonymous sources claiming that Alameda CEO, Caroline Ellison, informed other Alameda employees that she and executives Gary Wang and Nishad Singh were all aware of the loan to Alameda.
Bankman-Fried is reportedly still in the Bahamas, though other high-ranking FTX employees have fled to Hong Kong, the former location of its headquarters.
Kraken exchange claims to know the identity of the hacker that stole FTX funds and claims it was an insider. [source]
Between $1-2 billion in customer funds is reportedly still unaccounted for.
The Twitter account, @unusual_whales, reports that FTX had built a backdoor that let billions of dollars be removed while making changes to the company’s financial record without flagging the transaction either internally or externally.
FTX Losers
The following major investors suffered serious losses (this list doesn’t include investors in FTX.US) [source] (amount included if known):
Sequoia Capital. 1.1% stake in FTX. Invested ~ $200 million in FTX
Temasek. 1% stake in FTX. Invested ~$205 million.
Paradigm. 1% stake in FTX. Invested ~215 million.
Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. 0.4% stake in FTX. Invested ~80 million.
SoftBank.
Tiger Global Management.
NFL athlete Tom Brady & model Gisele Bundchen owned 0.15% and 0.09% FTX respectively as of June 2021.
NBA athlete Stephen Curry.
Seinfeld co-creator Larry David.
Alex Wice “Had entire net worth on FTX, oops.” [source]
Karl Chappe-Gatien (aka High Stakes Capital) tweeted, “I didn’t get out. Lost 35% of my total NW as my capital is split in several places. . . . Outside of money, I feel betrayed by Sam and I can’t imagine how the FTX employees feel” [source]
Interesting Correlations
Bankman-Fried’s mother, Barbara Fried, is the co-founder of the left-leaning PAC Mind The Gap, which also funneled ~$140 million into the 2022 “get out the vote” grift [source].
Bankman-Fried’s aunt, Linda P. Fried, is currently (as of 11/13/22) the Dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, a college founded in 1918 (…pandemic…) that deals a lot with understanding public health and interventions. Chelsea Clinton attended this university.
Bankman-Fried’s brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried, was a former Wall Street trader and is currently the directory of a non-profit organization called Guarding Against Pandemics, a left-leaning PAC created in 2020 explicitly to support a proposal by the Biden administration to allocate $30 billion in federal funding toward containing future pandemics.
Raised $378 million from 2021-2022, dispersing 50% of that. [source]
During high school (in 2010), Bankman-Fried was sent to a 5-week mathematics summer program called Canada/USA Mathcamp. Gary Wang, who would co-found FTX with Sam in 2019, also attended this elite summer camp (in 2011).
Additional References
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