In 2022, the creator of FTX met with top White House officials at least four times.
At least four times in 2022, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried visited with government officials at the White House, one of which apparently happened only two months before the collapse of his crypto empire.
Most of the encounters were documented in monthly visitor logs maintained by the White House, with records indicating that Bankman-Fried met with Counselor to the President Steve Ricchetti on April 22 and May 12, as well as policy advisor Charlotte Butash on May 13.
However, according to a Bloomberg article published on December 29, the former FTX CEO met with the president’s advisor Ricchette on September 8, a meeting that was not recorded in the visitor records.
Crypto community members are curious as to why there seemed to be such a revolving door of visits between FTX and the White House after the discovery.
According to a Bloomberg article, sources said that politics were not addressed during the conference, with the emphasis instead being on the crypto sector, exchanges, and the prevention of pandemics.
Even though he resided in the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried is said to have made many trips to Washington in an effort to influence crypto policy and build relationships there. Previously, he was accused of aiming to push regulators away from centralized exchanges such as FTX and toward decentralized finance (DeFi) systems such as the lending protocol MakerDAO.
In an interview with crypto blogger Tiffany Fong on November 16, Bankman-Fried revealed that he had contributed around the same amount to both parties, but that his “Republican contributions were dark.”
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