Sam Bankman-Fried’s mom asked him to get her $92K within a day

Earlier this week, I found myself in a moment as a parent I am not proud of. My child lost a tooth right before bedtime, and the Tooth Fairy found herself completely out of cash (who carries cash now?!).

So, in the dark of night, I snuck into my son’s piggy bank, stole a crumpled $5 bill, and placed it under my sleeping angel’s pillow. Yes, I felt horrible.

(A note for him when he’s old enough to google his mom and comes across this: Son, let’s talk about this.)

In some ways, I thought of my turn as the Tooth Fairy/piggy bank borrower when I read The Wall Street Journal’s scoop published Friday about Sam Bankman-Fried and the political donations his company funded. The Journal said these donations were quite a
“family affair.”

The story mentioned something that might otherwise seem unrelatable to most parents: hitting your kid up for a huge chunk of money.

The Journal looked at emails that had previously not been reported where Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried discussed political donations. (Their reps didn’t immediately return my request for comment.) It’s a complicated story, which you should read, but this part is what really stuck out to me, where SBF’s mom emails him and another FTX exec, Nihad Singh:

Bankman-Fried’s mother also directed spending from her son’s crypto fortune. “Hi Sam and Nishad: Can I hit you guys up for $92K (by tomorrow if at all possible!) to close the gaps on two projects we have committed to fund as part of our new Research Initiative?” Fried wrote in an August 2021 email.

She identified a pair of progressive-leaning groups, New Virginia Majority and Activate America. “Sure,” Bankman-Fried replied.

As a mother who has “borrowed” money from her own child’s piggy bank, I can relate. The cheerful email, the slangy phrasing of asking to “hit you guys up” for the money, the extra exclamation point inside a parenthesis — I relate! Just … maybe not the part about it being $92,000.