Sam Bankman-Fried is an American entrepreneur and CEO with a net worth of $22 billion. He is best known for his work in the world of cryptocurrency, having founded the cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. He is also known for his work with Alameda Research, a firm that engages in quantitative cryptocurrency trading.
Widely considered to be one of the richest people in cryptocurrency, Sam became a billionaire before his 30th birthday. Bankman-Fried has been praised by observers for avoiding many of the legal issues that rival exchanges have faced in the cryptocurrency world.
With all that said, most of his wealth is tied up in tokens and his ownership stake of FTX, and his assets have been described as "of speculative value" and "illiquid." In 2021, a screenshot of his digital wallet reportedly showed $10 billion in digital coins. However, it was also reported that $5 billion in coins were "locked" and not available for conversion. In addition, $4 billion of those coins were issued by FTX.
Sam Bankman-Fried was born on March 6th of 1992 in Stanford, California. Raised by two professors at Stanford Law School, Sam became interested in utilitarianism at a young age. He also displayed a talent for mathematics and attended summer camps for gifted students during his high school years. After graduating, Sam attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and eventually graduated with a degree in physics. During his college years, Bankman-Fried blogged about topics such as sports, politics, and utilitarianism.
After gaining his physics degree, Bankman-Fried started working for a proprietary trading firm called Jane Street Capital. However, he quickly became dissatisfied with trading international EFTs and moved to Berkeley in 2017 to become the director for the Centre for Effective Altruism. In 2017, he founded Alameda Research, which specializes in quantitative trading.
In 2018, he took advantage of the fact that bitcoin was priced higher in Japan and organized an arbitrage trade to trade more than $25 in bitcoin every single day. In 2018, Sam also moved to Hong Kong, later founding FTX. This cryptocurrency derivatives exchange was officially founded in 2019, and it now owns about 90% of Alameda Research. FTX is now one of the leading exchanges for crypto derivatives trading, and it is "built by traders, for traders." Initially, FTX was relatively obscure, but it soon reached incredible heights over a space of about three years.
In 2021, FTX raised $900 million from companies like Coinbase Ventures and SoftBank, achieving an $18 billion valuation and helping Bankman-Fried become one of the richest people under the age of 30 in known history. This set a new industry record for fundraising, and it meant that FTX's valuation was 18 times higher than it had been about 1.5 years earlier. Sam owns about 60% of FTX.
In late-January 2022 FTX raised $400 million at a $32 billion valuation.
Following its meteoric rise in 2021, FTX has established marketing contracts with high-profile brands like Major League Baseball and the Miami Heat. In fact, it was reported that the Heat was renaming its home stadium the "FTX Arena" following this deal. Despite its involvement with these US-based brands, FTX has stated that they refuse orders from US-based traders wishing to exchange digital currency. This is because US regulators are extremely strict when it comes to cryptocurrency exchanges.
There are those who state that FTX will come under increased scrutiny from the US regulatory system, and that many similar exchanges have all faced criminal actions in the past. These critics say that it's only a matter of time before the US cracks down on FTX, and the only reason it has avoided these consequences is that it is so new. FTX is based in Hong Kong because its activities would be considered illegal in the United States.
Bankman-Fried has stated that he plans to give most of his fortune away to charities at some point. He has joined organizations such as Giving What We Can, and FTX gives 1% of its revenue to charity each year. He personally donated $5.2 million to Joe Biden's election campaign in 2020.
Sam is a vegan who sleeps about four hours each night. Most of the time, he sleeps on a bean bag chair directly next to his computer.
