FTX Chief Sam Bankman-Fried Visited White House In May, Visitor Logs Reveal: Here's What Likely Transpired

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the cryptocurrency exchange’s policy heads visited the White House in May, records show.

What Happened: Bankman-Fried was accompanied by FTX’s director of government relations and policy Eloria Katz and FTX’s head of policy Mark Wetjen to his meeting with White House policy advisor Charlotte Butash and counselor, according to newly released visitor logs. 

The matter was reported earlier by CoinDesk.

While the visitor logs did not detail the agenda of the meetings, the discussions were likely centered around FTX’s proposal to allow the exchange to settle cryptocurrency transactions directly.

The proposal put forward to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) would let FTX clear its users’ crypto swaps without the need for a clearing house.

In May, the CFTC hosted a discussion about possibly cutting out industry middlemen at a Washington D.C. roundtable, inviting industry experts and academics to weigh in on the proposal.

“There is some irony in some of the statements made by people attempting to protect those who know massively more than they do about the topic and who understand these products extremely well,” said Bankman-Fried at the time.

See Also: IS REGULATION BAD FOR CRYPTO?

Price Action: The crypto market saw a 1.2% increase over the last 24 hours. Bitcoin BTC/USD was trading at $20,341, up 0.90% and EthereumETH/USD was trading at $1,591, up 4% over the last day.

Photo courtesy: FTX