Crypto kid Sam Bankman-Fried charmed politicians – until his $32bn empire suddenly imploded

Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old wunderkind of cryptocurrency, spent tens of millions of dollars over the past year trying to reshape how Washington and the world think about finance. The crypto exchange he founded, FTX, had become an industry-dominating business in just three years, valued at $32bn as recently as January. He amassed political clout in an even bigger hurry, emerging from obscurity to become the second-biggest Democratic donor in the mid-term elections. By Friday, the money and the clout had disappeared: Bankman-Fried resigned from FTX, which then filed for bankruptcy. Yesterday, the company revealed it was investigating “unauthorized transactions” worth…