FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried Visited White House in May
The CEO of FTX visited the White House when he testified before government agencies in May.
Key Takeaways
- FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and other employees of the FTX exchange visited the White House in May.
- Details of the visit are unknown, but the visit coincided with Bankman-Fried's testimony before Congress.
- FTX staff met with members of the Biden administration rather than President Joe Biden himself.
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FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and other exchange staff visited the White House in May, according to visitor logs.
FTX CEO and Others Visited White House
FTX staff visited the White House this year.
Newly-published log documents show that the employees visited the presidential residence on May 12 and May 13, 2022.
The visitor log names three individuals who work at FTX: CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, director of government relations and policy Eloria Katz, and head of policy Mark Wetjen.
It does not appear that the FTX team met with President Biden. Rather, they met with Biden administration policy adviser Charlotte Butash and counselor Steve Ricchetti.
The details of the meeting are not clear. However, the visit coincided with one of Sam Bankman-Fried’s appearances before Congress. On May 12, Bankman-Fried and various individuals testified before Congress, advocating for a March proposal that would allow for non-intermediated derivatives trading.
Later, on May 25, Sam Bankman-Fried attended a round table hosted by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on the same issue. That event included many industry members.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s brother Gabriel also visited the White House alongside the rest of the team. Though Gabriel is not associated with FTX, the two brothers have cooperated on issues such as a pandemic readiness PAC. The PAC does not have any relation to cryptocurrency, in spite of rumors.
It is not clear that any of those issues were discussed at the White House, but FTX’s engagement with regulations means that some variation on these topics were likely discussed.
FTX has established itself as a major crypto exchange since it opened in 2019. It handled nearly $2 billion in volume over the past 24 hours; FTX.US handled another $220 million.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies.
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