Crypto donor help Dems overperform in mid-terms

 Politico:

Crypto megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried helped bankroll Democrats’ overperformance in the midterms. But any friends he may have had in Washington won’t be there for him as his crumbling business empire threatens to torpedo the entire digital currency market.

Bankman-Fried’s Washington influence — as well as billions of dollars of his personal wealth — nearly vanished in the span of 48 hours, after it emerged that the giant crypto exchange he founded was insolvent and unable to meet customer withdrawals.

State and federal regulators are now investigating the exchange, FTX, to determine whether it may have harmed clients or broken other financial regulations. An emergency rescue from competing digital asset exchange Binance fell apart after the company dug into FTX’s financials and investigators circled.

The crisis has demolished Bankman-Fried’s public image as a go-to resource for policymakers writing rules for crypto — a reputation that was built on his willingness to write multimillion dollar checks to boost Democrats.

One Democratic congressional staffer who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly compared the collapse to seeing the man behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz,” with Bankman-Fried’s razzle-dazzle performance for lawmakers and regulators amounting to smoke and mirrors.

“There are folks who are going to feel burned by this whole episode,” said Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research at the global financial services firm BTIG. “This is a pretty big body blow for an industry that was just starting to get its legs under it.”

The meltdown — arguably the most devastating in the history of crypto — is threatening to derail a broader industry lobbying campaign that had been gaining traction with Republicans and Democrats eager to draft new laws to accommodate digital asset startups. Bankman-Fried and his lobbyists, including former federal regulators, were at the center of the effort. It’s also wreaking financial havoc across the crypto market, creating new headaches for FTX’s competitors and other firms.
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Hopefully, the Democrats will also pay a price for this scam.  Republicans should be demanding investigations of this Democrat fund raising.

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