Every so often in political and philanthropic consulting, there comes along a client whom everyone wants—needs—to find a connection to in order to pitch and, perhaps, land a hefty payday. Right now, that’s Sam Bankman-Fried, the provocative, whip-smart, and omnipresent 29-year-old C.E.O. of the crypto exchange FTX who has, in the words of Cory Booker last week, “a much more glorious afro than I once had.” Bankman-Fried, or S.B.F., as he is now universally known in this world, has been an in-demand character for months, but the chase to woo him has grown more feverish of late as he has expanded the tentacles of his political machine in new and fascinating ways. I know several Democratic advisers who are trying their damndest to get in front of him right now.

Two years ago, no one had heard of the founder of FTX, then a pipsqueak competitor in a market dominated by Coinbase. I first discovered S.B.F. on a campaign filing in the fall of 2020, when he and an LLC he founded gave $10 million to Future Forward, a long operating-in-stealth super PAC. I like to think I cover the donor class as fervently as anyone, but I had no earthly idea who this guy was. (Google Trends data tells me, comfortingly, that few other people did then, either.)