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- Sam Bankman-Fried met with Jerome Powell last year to discuss crypto, per the NYT.
- Powell's other private-sector meetings that month were with top Wall Street CEOs.
- SBF also met with the FDIC chair, Martin Gruenberg.
Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, once met with Sam Bankman-Fried to discuss crypto, The New York Times reported.
The Times obtained emails showing the February 2022 meeting was arranged by Mark Wetjen, an FTX policy official and former commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Prior to the meeting, Wetjen sent the Fed chair some policy papers that FTX had recently published, according to the NYT.
Powell, Bankman-Fried, and other FTX executives discussed stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to assets like the dollar — and central bank digital currencies, a person familiar with the situation told The Times.
In the same month, Powell's public calendar shows his other private-sector meetings were with the likes of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon; Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase CEO; and the Morgan Stanley CEO, James Gorman.
Even then, seven months before FTX filed for bankruptcy, the NYT reports that regulators were more hesitant to meet with crypto firms, and it was unusual that FTX secured a meeting with Powell.
The Times reports Bankman-Fried also had a virtual meeting in October 2021 with Lael Brainard, who was then a top Fed official and now serves as director of the National Economic Council.
And in June 2022, the FTX founder met with Martin Gruenberg, the acting chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, his public calendar shows.
Two months later, the FDIC ordered FTX to stop telling customers their funds were insured, calling the crypto exchange's statements "false and misleading"
FTX filed for bankruptcy last November after a CoinDesk report unveiled suspiciously close ties between the crypto exchange and its sister trading firm, Alameda. Customers rushed to withdraw their funds, but FTX couldn't cover the demand — partially due to lavish spending by executives.
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to seven charges including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He could face over 100 years in prison if convicted of all charges.
His trial begins next Tuesday, October 3.
The Federal Reserve declined to comment. The FDIC and a spokesperson for Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent outside US working hours.