, Author: Gong Quanyu, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.

Through political donations and the establishment of election contracts, SBF and his FTX have been deeply involved in this US presidential election, which not only reflects the growing influence of the cryptocurrency market on the global society and the demand for a better policy environment, but also reflects It shows SBF's increasingly large encryption market ambitions.

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Potential intent of political donations

On November 5th, when the results of the U.S. presidential election were about to be announced, a piece of explosive news swept over half of the cryptocurrency market. According to data from the campaign fund tracking website Open Secret, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (hereinafter referred to as SBF) Donated US$5.2 million to the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, second only to Bloomberg founder Michael Bloomberg among "CEO donors".

At the same time, SBF was also exposed by the media as a member of the Democratic super PAC (Political Action Committee) "Future Forward". Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt are both members of the PAC.

In the U.S. presidential election, political donations from the outside world are common political behaviors. Many interest groups will help promising candidates run for president through donations and other actions, in order to bring more policy benefits to their fields, and then gain more economic benefits. and social interests.

This time SBF’s political donation to the Biden camp is the largest known donation from a person in the cryptocurrency field in the presidential campaign, and it also reflects the growing influence of the cryptocurrency market on the global society and the need for a better policy environment demands. In the past year, many people in the cryptocurrency field announced their participation in the presidential election, but the public relations propaganda is more meaningful than the real meaning, and direct political donations are more effective for the industry.

Although Biden has not clearly expressed his views on the blockchain and the cryptocurrency market so far, Trump, another candidate, has publicly stated on Twitter, "I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Not money, their value is too volatile and their foundations are weak. Unregulated crypto assets may facilitate unregulated behavior, including drug dealing and other illegal activities. …”

This attitude has also led to Trump’s failure to promote any legislative actions favorable to cryptocurrency regulation at the federal government level during his four years as President of the United States. Although the financial regulatory departments of some local governments have relevant licensing systems, the review process and business requirements are also extremely strict, and the encryption industry has complained a lot.

In addition, four senior executives of BitMEX, an established futures exchange, have recently been prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice. Ripple, another well-known blockchain project, also recently claimed that it is considering moving its headquarters out of the United States. Popular, the SEC's stance just crushes and pushes it away, so much so that we're considering moving our headquarters to a more regulatory-friendly jurisdiction." Chris Larsen, executive chairman of Ripple, said publicly that Ripple doesn't want to evade the rules, just Want to operate in a jurisdiction with clear rules.

On the other hand, Biden actually has the support of many financial and technology companies. Data from the Open Secret website shows that Google’s parent company Alphabet, the famous incubator Y Combinator, well-known hedge funds Renaissance Technologies and Paloma Partners, etc., reflect their support for Biden after he took office. Confidence and expectations in implementing the New Deal.

In fact, similar incidents have happened countless times in American society in the past, and have become part of the American power game and rules. According to Kellogg Insight research, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, oil companies, the energy sector, and fossil fuel companies all donated large sums of money to Trump's campaign. Just two months after taking office, Trump approved construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The program was terminated by President Obama, but Trump overturned that decision and made it a priority.

Therefore, the purpose of SBF's behavior is not difficult to analyze. The first level is that he believes that Biden's election is more beneficial to the cryptocurrency market, at least no longer as clear as Trump's suppression. Sign up and get closer to seek a better policy environment for the cryptocurrency market and even your own business. After all, this is the second-largest donation after Michael Bloomberg, the leader of the Democratic Party.

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Expansion of trading thinking

In fact, in the eyes of SBF, the U.S. presidential election is not only a major event that affects the direction of U.S. cryptocurrency regulatory policies, but also a "sweet pastry" that brings more direct commercial benefits to its own business.

If it weren't for the sudden exposure of that website, SBF's political donations to Biden would still be unknown, and more of his influence in the US election comes from the presidential election contract launched by FTX. The futures contract was officially launched in February this year, allowing investors to invest and earn income based on their own judgments on the results of the general election. The value is set between 0-1 US dollars. For the winning contract, if Trump wins, the value of a single contract will become $1, and the profit will be more than three times, otherwise, the price will return to 0.

Since the launch of the contract for more than half a year, the price of the contract winning the Biden contract has been higher than that of the contract winning the Trump contract for a long time, which reflects that FTX users expressed their willingness to be more optimistic about Biden winning the election through actual capital investment. At the same time, the contract has almost become one of the main windows for a large number of people in the cryptocurrency industry to observe the trend of the US election. Many media will report on the price trend of the election contract on the FTX exchange, which indirectly brings a lot of exposure to the exchange and attracts more Multiple trading users.

At the same time, SFB has recently frequently tweeted its views on the election situation and the corresponding contract trend, which is equivalent to building momentum for its election contract products, and these various measures have indeed received positive results. On November 4th, the day when the U.S. presidential election was the most intense, the total trading volume of the four contract products on the FTX platform involved in the presidential election reached more than 30 million U.S. dollars, bringing a large number of new users and revenue to the platform.

After this battle, combined with the equity certificates that have been launched, FTX has gone further and further in its goal of covering the "secondary market for all categories of commodities". The image of "innovators" and "pioneers" in the field of derivatives trading in the encrypted world has been deeply people's hearts. All of this is largely due to SBF's distinctive personal characteristics and trading thinking.

According to public information, SBF graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's ace major in physics, and then worked as a counter trader in the well-known quantitative company Jane Street for three years. He has been involved in ETF, futures, currency and stock transactions, forming a well-trained Elementary and systematic trading thinking. "I'm used to the speed and responsiveness of the transaction, and I've created around that for the rest of my life," SBF said of the experience in an interview. "It definitely annoys me a lot when things are going slowly."

At the end of 2017, SBF entered the cryptocurrency market and successively established the encrypted quantification company Alameda and the encrypted trading platform FTX. At the same time, it invested in dozens of encrypted companies and gradually emerged as one of the important forces in the encrypted world. Its rapid response ability and rich market means Playing an important role in this process, promoting SBF to take swift and decisive actions in several important events in the cryptocurrency market, significantly expanding its interests and influence.

During the outbreak of the DeFi market in the middle of the year, according to Lianwen, SBF pledged a large amount of FTT, SUSHI and SRM on the decentralized lending platform Cream Finance, and at the same time lent valuable ETH and USDT, as well as UNI, MTA, CREAM, LINK and other DeFi coins, and short selling on the trading platform to obtain huge benefits. However, SBF has also been criticized for this, such as using the centralized tokens issued by itself to manipulate the price of decentralized assets.

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