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What Media Has Sam Bankman-Fried Invested in Other Than The Block? Here Is a List

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“SBF is one of the greatest fraudsters in history, he is also a master manipulator when it comes to media and key opinion leaders.”

This is how Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao commented on Sam Bankman-Fried on Twitter.  Sam Bankman-Fried, the billionaire witnessed the collapse of  FTX (his exchange) and Alameda Research (his personal trading firm), has been no stranger to funding journalistic endeavors. He invested in a slew of media companies, giving millions of dollars in grants, either from his FTX Venture, Alameda Research, or his own pocket.

According to an earlier report from crypto media site The Block, The Block and its CEO were secretly funded by Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research.

Mike McCaffrey, CEO of The Block, resigned immediately after his personal loan comes to light. He received a total of $43 million from Alameda. McCaffrey took over as CEO in 2021 after using a $12 million loan to buy out other investors. The second $15 million loan in January was for daily operations, and the third $16 million was for McCaffrey to purchase personal real estate in the Bahamas.

Three Arrows Capital co-founder Su Zhu said on Twitter that CEO of The Block “has been bribed massively”, and The Block "has been de facto wholly owned by SBF for years". Su Zhu addressed that the entire editorial direction of The Block was run by SBF.

Frank Chaparro, the Director of News at The Block, hosts a weekly crypto podcast The Scoop. “Frank's podcast was literally sponsored by FTX,” said Three Arrows Capital co-founder Su Zhu.

Frank Chaparro hosted a 2-hour interview with Bankman-Fried for the podcast on Monday. SBF described how a legacy payment system linked FTX’s future to Alameda Research’s fate, and why regulators and auditors failed to discover this relationship.

As for the news of McCaffrey's secret loans from Bankman-Fried, Frank Chaparro said he was “absolutely gutted”, and feels “utter disgust and betrayal”.

The Block is not the only media site Sam Bankman-Fried ‘manipulate’. According to an Excel spreadsheet first shared by the Financial Times, Alameda's private equity portfolio also includes many other publishers, media, data analytics, and social media platforms. Here is a list of Sam Bankman-Fried's investments in the media industry from high to low based on the investment amount.

Odaily is a Chinese Web 3.0 and Crypto-focused media outlet, with exclusive strategic cooperation of the 36Kr Group.

Alameda spent $5 million on Odaily News, accounting for 25% of the shares.

On Feburary 2022, Propublica announced it received a $5 million grant from a family foundation run by Sam Bankman-Fried and his brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried.

The grant will support reporting on biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.

Sam Bankman-Fried made a $4 million grant to The Intercept, which at the time of FTX's fall had already received $500,000, another 250,000 was due in December, and $3.25 million in the coming years.

The Intercept’s Acting Editor-in-Chief announced  that future grant payments are “on hold,” and ask readers for donations.

BlockBeats News is another Chinese digital asset news publication. Alameda invested $3.56 million for a 30% stake in BlockBeats.

Alameda Research invested $1.2 million in Trustless Media, the company behind Coinage, an NFT-backed news show.

According to a report in early July, Trustless Media raised $3.25 million in a seed round and was planning to launch “NFTV shows”. The round was led by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

As first reported by Fortune on Nov. 3, FTX Ventures has invested in the Lens Protocol, a new base layer for Web3 social media applications created by the team behind decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Aave.

The investment amount was said to be $1 million. However, the news remains uncertain. On Nov.11 — 8 days after the report, FTX filed for bankruptcy.

According to a report dated back to September 2020, Dune Analytics, the Ethereum-centric analytics platform, has raised $2 million in a seed funding round. Alameda Research was among the investors with $652K in funding.

According to a press release on June 2022, Chillchat has raised US$6.5 million through a seed token round to a develop social metaverse platform. The round was led by FTX Ventures and Crypto.com Capital. Spreadsheet shows the investment amount is $500K.

Brian Lee, Partner of FTX Ventures, stated that "FTX is always seeking to push the crypto ecosystem forward, so when we saw how Chillchat approaches user-generated content in a fun and easy way, we saw it as a perfect opportunity to onboard the next wave of social and casual gamers into crypto."

HODL Media is the publisher of HODL app, a crypto & stock market tracker. HODL Media is funded by 6 investors. Alameda Research invested $250K in HODL.

Nas Company (formerly Nas Academy) is a Singapore based community service platform. It provides services for community builders, brands, content creators, DAO builders. FTX Ventures invested $100K in Nas.

Semafor is a new journalism project created by Ben Smith, formerly the media columnist at The New York Times. CEO of Semafor confirmed Sam Bankman-Fried invested individually in Semafor’s pre-seed round, invest amount is undisclosed.

Last month, Semafor reported Bankman-Fried held a previously undisclosed stake in Twitter, Elon Musk denied the report and retorted: “Semafor is owned by SBF. This is a massive conflict of interest in your reporting”.

According to a tweet of journalist Teddy Schleifer, Bankman-Fried funded Vox Media. Vox is a news web site created by liberal bloggers, it also owns several other outlets, including New York magazine.

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