WASHINGTON — Democratic billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried says he could spend $1 billion or more in the 2024 election, which would easily make him the biggest-ever political donor in a single election.
Bankman-Fried, 30, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, said in a podcast interview released Tuesday that he expects to give “north of $100 million” in the next presidential election and that he has a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion, with his spending likely to be on the higher end if former President Donald Trump runs again.
That kind of money would be “in a league of its own,” said Alex Baumgart, a researcher with the campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets.
Bankman-Fried, who is estimated to be worth more than $20 billion and says he has already given away more than $200 million to various causes, cautions that his political plans are still in flux and that they will be contingent on what the landscape looks like.
“I would guess north of $100 million. As for how much more than that, I don’t know. It really does depend on what happens. It’s really dependent on exactly who’s running where for what,” he said on the Pushkin Industries podcast “What’s Your Problem.” “[$1 billion] is a decent thing to look at as a — I would hate to say hard ceiling, because who knows what’s going to happen between now and then — but at least sort of as a soft ceiling.”
That amount of money would be unprecedented, and it would shatter records several times over — at least if it were all spent as so-called hard money, which includes donations to candidates, parties, super PACs and other groups who have to report to the Federal Election Commission.
It’s impossible to know how much other wealthy donors have spent to influence politics via so-called dark money, which includes donations to groups like think tanks and nonprofit advocacy organizations.
The most hard money any individual has spent in any election cycle was $218 million in 2020, by the late Republican casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, according to OpenSecrets.
The Adelsons have competed in recent years to be the biggest donors in the country with Democratic billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, who have each spent $75 million to $150 million in the last three elections (not including the money they spent on their own presidential campaigns in 2020).
Liberal billionaire George Soros this year committed to spend $125 million toward this year’s midterms.
Beyond those well-known names, even mega-donors typically top out around $40 million to $60 million per election cycle, so $100 million would put Bankman-Fried among a tiny handful of the country’s biggest donors.
“If this is sustained and it’s actually fully realized, it could have an immense impact on U.S. politics,” Baumgart said, comparing the scope of the potential spending to that of the…
Read More: Crypto billionaire says he could spend a record $1 billion in 2024 election
