Crypto Political Donations Dwarf Bankman-Fried’s Heyday (1)

Donald Trump’s meeting with deep-pocketed donors at a Bitcoin conference tomorrow is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the renewed prominence of the digital-asset sector in the current political campaign cycle.

Industry donors have poured more money into the 2024 election than in all prior cycles combined, according to tracker OpenSecrets — that’s without even counting all donations from the second quarter. In the 2022 election cycle, crypto exchange operators and their major venture capital backers donated $88 million, a Bloomberg analysis of Federal Election Commission records found. That figure includes donations recipients later disgorged from ...