The Intercept begged its readers for donations after the publication revealed that a multimillion-dollar grant from disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried would be placed “on hold” due to FTX filing for bankruptcy.
Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange FTX plummeted from a $32 billion valuation to facing bankruptcy after his company was at the center of significant scandals in the cryptocurrency space last week.
As Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney explained:
We’re still learning exactly what happened to FTX, but there are definite echoes from the financial crisis. On November 3, Coindesk reported that much of the $14.6 billion of assets of a fund called Alameda Research consisted of tokens created by FTX. These tokens are sort of like airline miles—a kind of currency generated by the company that is issued to its customers—except that they could be traded on crypto exchanges. Many found this disturbing because Alameda Research is also owned by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who everyone calls SBF. This raised the possibility that the value of FTT, the FTX tokens, was being artificially propped up by Alameda’s dragon hoard of the tokens.
In addition to being a Democrat mega-donor, Bankman-Fried funneled millions of dollars to media outlets through one of his philanthropic entities, the Building a Stronger Future foundation.