The Endless Downfall of a Crypto Power Couple – The New York Times

He was a wealthy cryptocurrency executive who owned a shiny white Porsche and a luxury condo in the Bahamas. She was a crypto policy expert with political ambitions and an advocate for the industry in Washington.

Romance blossoms after the two are brought together by an unlikely matchmaker, Sam Bankman Freed, the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Two years ago, FTX executive Ryan Salame and crypto advocate Michelle Bond were an industry power couple. While Mr. Salameh donated tens of millions of dollars to conservative politicians, who hailed him as “the Republican Party's rising mega-donor,” Mr. Bonds ran for Congress and gained attention. support From Donald Trump Jr.

But this crypto boy meets crypto girl story turned into a legal nightmare. Salame, 31, who was once Bankman Fried's aide, is scheduled to report to a federal prison in Maryland on Friday to serve a 7-1/2-year sentence after pleading guilty to campaign finance fraud. In August, Mr. Bond, 45, who lives with Mr. Salame and his young son in Potomac, Maryland, was also charged with campaign finance violations related to FTX.

The couple had a small ceremony in Nevada last month. But the $4 million Potomac home he bought in 2022, at the height of FTX's success, will be sold and the proceeds will be given up in full. Salameh went from meeting with politicians to skirmishing with anonymous trolls on X. After FTX collapsed in late 2022, Bond resigned as head of the prominent cryptocurrency trading organization and became a target of federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York who were pursuing her husband.

“Having a relationship with me would be a problem,” Salameh said in an interview from her home in September. “It wasn't great for her to have me in her life.”