Emerging Alt-Social Conspiracy: FTX funded election fraud
As the cryptocurrency market implodes following the collapse of FTX, alt-social users have leveraged the turmoil to deepen political conspiracies and create further instability.
With the company in the hole for $8 billion and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) implicated in a variety of financial crimes, FTX provides alt-social ecosystem users with a big, shiny, new lever to pull into their intricate web of political conspiracies.
Right now, the primary narrative spreading on the fringe is that FTX laundered money through Ukraine to the Democratic party in order to secure a midterm victory for Democrats. This piece of disinformation serves a specific purpose for the extremist fringe by explaining the GOP’s underperformance in the midterms (and supporting the unbased idea that Democrats cheated).
One way disinformation spreads through the fringe ecosystem is by building new theories from a foundation of wild, unproven assumptions. In this case, the idea that Democrats are corrupt and cheated in the midterm elections (through voter fraud, ballot stuffing, and vote tampering) is assumed true, and used as evidence to bolster the new theory that SBF’s financial support of Democrats was nefarious and part of a larger plot to redirect aid money from Ukraine to Democratic midterm candidates. While SBF is undoubtedly guilty of many things, to date there is no evidence that he collaborated with Joe Biden to use FTX to launder Ukrainian aid dollars for American Democrats.
But posts that construct a clear narrative of secret Democratic corruption are widely popular, regardless of whether they are based on fact. One heavily trending post focuses on a $7 million asset in FTX’s leaked balance sheet called “TRUMPLOSE”. The narrative - based almost entirely on “reporting” done by the Gateway Pundit, a notorious website for right-wing fake news - asserts Ukrainian aid dollars were being laundered to US Democrats through cryptocurrency.
For right-wing alt-social users, SBF himself makes a compelling target too: in addition to donating millions to the Democratic party, his Jewish heritage allows conspiracists to advance antisemitic narratives of global influence and greed. This brand of disinformation is particularly harmful - it actively stokes fear, hatred, and possible violence towards Jewish people by implicating the entire group in evil plots to oppress and control the rest of the world.
Disinformation about FTX’s collapse has also spread rapidly to the mainstream. On Twitter, a verified account circulated a deepfake video of SBF promising compensation for users who lost money from FTX’s bankruptcy if they entered a crypto giveaway on a third party website. The logo of FTX featured prominently throughout the video, along with a highly realistic depiction of SBF. Deepfake videos use AI technology to mimic a person’s face and voice, lending credibility to scams and preying on people’s desperation.
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