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orangepurple

Is this the same FTX US that is the #3 donor to political parties?

2/3 (D) 1/3 (R)

https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/top-organizat...

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$70,099,115

70 million in one year. Yikes. Seems like the company was full of bad decisions.

Less bad decisions and more making sure they had political cover for their Ponzi and no one investigated them too hard.

Yup, money to politicians does tend to make them look away.

These donations were pretty clearly part of a forward-play on having a prominent seat at the table for writing regulations, it’s not really a secret that they were planning to try to starve out Binance through crypto regulation.

Also while it’s kind of a thing to buy influence to the legislative process, buying your way out of justice isn’t really. There’s way too much apparatus outside of electoral politics. FTX wasn’t investigated because what were they going to be investigated for, it’s an unregulated offshore financial outfit with no signs of distress until it went boom, like most “Ponzi schemes”.

Why would an organization donate to BOTH competitors sizeable amounts like this? Okay, it's more to the dems, but quite a sum for the gop as well. Do they just want a soft landing regardless who wins? Wouldn't that be the same if not funding at all? Or maybe not, they can tell later any winner "look I paid ya"...

From a "trader" perspective, the best policy if you are bribing is bribing any current AND future candidates, discounted by some factor for probability of being in power at some point in the future, and discounted by the time value of money (so people currently in power gets more.) That's probably the type of amoral, risk reward based thinking that goes through someone like SBF's head.

Source: was a quant at some hedge fund in a past life.

Donations from employees, not the company itself. The company can't force the employees to donate in a specific way (or maybe they can. I don't the know US laws, but that would sound unethical)

yes

Yes. There are whole articles online (by both sides) about how he became a critical Democratic party supporter almost overnight.

According to MarketWatch, he was the second largest donor to the Democrat Party.

Good for him I guess that Dems did well in the election. Though, I would love an independent probe to ensure there's no quid pro quo.

Your hypothesis is the second largest donor to the Democrat Party gave without expectation of quid pro quo?

I didn't try to suggest it because HN would probably downvote me to oblivion if I did. I personally, however, think that a quid pro quo is pretty likely - and Republicans would shout this from the rooftops if they had a little more sense in my opinion. Stealing a ton of money, giving a ton to Democrats, potentially helping win an election, and then not investigating or properly punishing the thief is a perfect crime... so, if I am the Dems, I would throw or at least try to get 150+ years in prison Madoff-style at a minimum.

> Republicans would shout this from the rooftops if they had a little more sense in my opinion.

The Republican party has been defunct since 2008. I say this as a republican. Yes, they have local machines in isolated areas, but the party itself is non-existent on a national level, except when they scrape by due people being disaffected by the democrats. The Republicans have not been a true majority party for decades.

You will certainly see certain republicans shouting this, myself included. You will see smaller local groups shout this. But the national party does not really exist

Why does anyone donate to a political party? They must expect some quo; isn't that your implication? Perhaps it's a systemic problem?

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