YouTuber Nas Daily in one of his video named him as the Most Generous Billionaire who wanted to donate all his wealth to charity. But ten months later, Sam Bankman-Fried is no longer a billionaire. He is alleged to have caused massive losses worth $1 billion to investors.
Known by his initials SBF, he is the co-founder and former CEO of FTX, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchange which has recently filed for bankruptcy in the US. “Hi all: Today, I filed FTX, FTX US, and Alameda for voluntary Chapter 11 proceedings in the US,” he wrote on Twitter causing havoc in crypto world.
Once a billionaire with an estimated wealth of $26 billion at peak, according to Bloomberg estimates, Fried has seen his wealth been entirely wiped out. Let us know about him in detail.
Who is Sam Bankman-Fried?
1) Fried studied physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and traded currencies, futures and exchange-traded funds before moving to crypto trading, setting up Alameda Research in 2017.
2) Bankman-Fried teamed up with Gary Wang, a former software engineer at Google and a fellow MIT graduate, to launch FTX in 2019. The company offered trading on crypto tokens and derivatives. In start of 2022, investors valued FTX and its U.S. operations at $40 billion.
3)He wanted to popularise cryto globally and for that he invested a lot in advertising. He got associated with National Football League quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bundchen. NBA star Steph Curry became the ambassador of FTX.
In February this year, pop star Katy Perry wrote on Instagram, “im quitting music and becoming an intern for @ftx_official ok.”
4) FTX lobbied with lawmakers and watchdogs to amend rules to include digital assets, in return Bankman-Fried made huge donations, Reuters reported. According to OpenSecrets, which tracks data on campaign finance and lobbying, Fried made almost $40 million contributions in the latest U.S. federal electoral cycle, becoming the sixth-largest individual donor.
5) Bankman-Fried transferred $10 billion in customer funds to his hedge fund, Alameda Research without publicly disclosing it, many say this become the reason for collapse of his empire.
(Inputs from Reuters)