Sam Bankman-Fried is an American businessman, investor, and former millionaire who goes by the initials SBF. He is the founder and former CEO of Alameda Research, a quantitative cryptocurrency trading company, FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, and FTX.US, its U.S. subsidiary.
Late in 2022, FTX had a solvency problem, which resulted in the demise of FTT, the native coin of FTX. Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO of FTX during the crisis and said he would wind down activities at Alameda Research. FTX then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Sam Bankman-Fried claims to be ‘improving’ his cryptic one-letter tweets.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former founder of FTX and a former millionaire, received some harsh criticism from Microstrategy creator and bitcoin enthusiast Michael Saylor (SBF).
“I think this [crypto] crash accelerates regulatory intervention,” I mean, in fact, in a sense, SBF is like the Jordan Belfort of the crypto era. Instead of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’ they’ll make a movie called ‘The King of Crypto.'”
Belfort notoriously served 22 months in jail after being found guilty of manipulating the stock market in 1999. Leonardo DiCaprio later played him in the 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
In the past week, Bankman-Fried has provided plenty of material for his detractors, contributing to a crypto crisis that may end up being another topic for a Hollywood blockbuster. After competitor Binance’s unsuccessful acquisition attempt, FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late last week.
Resigned as CEO
After creating a billion-dollar liquidity hole and allegedly misusing customer funds to place additional bets in the cryptocurrency market, Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO. Bankman-Fried later clarified that he will serve as the company’s advisor during the leadership change and work to provide “liquidity” for platform users.
Saylor claimed that Bankman-Fried “was using stolen and counterfeit money to lobby against all of the virtues in the industry, against bitcoin and against proof of work.” “He was trying to influence political decisions and corrupt rules. It’s bad for everyone when actors attempt to destroy the business by using stolen, counterfeit, and corrupt money. So, yes, I do believe that people need to understand this.”
Early Life
Sam Bankman-Fried was born on March 6, 1992 (at the age of 30) in Stanford, California, United States. He holds an American nationality. Her Zodiac sign is Pisces.
Net Worth
According to those with knowledge of the situation, FTX filed for bankruptcy last week, but the creator of the cryptocurrency exchange still believes he can gather enough cash to compensate consumers. Along with a few surviving staff members, Mr. Bankman-Fried spent the weekend making calls in an effort to secure pledges from investors to cover a potential $8 billion gap in order to pay back FTX’s clients.
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To date, attempts to make up for the gap have failed. The Wall Street Journal was unable to ascertain Mr. Bankman-proposed Fried’s exchange for any future influx of capital or if any investors had made a firm commitment.
Relationship
Sam doesn’t have a wife, although there are rumors that he does. Employees at FTX and Alameda who want to remain unnamed (Anonymous) informed CoinDesk that Bankman-Fried was dating Caroline Ellison, a coworker. Sam hasn’t yet corroborated this information.
Bankman-Fried, Sam He was reared in an upper-middle-class Jewish household in California and is the son of Stanford Law School professors Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman. The dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health is his aunt Linda P. Fried. Former Wall Street trader and director of the non-profit Guarding Against Pandemics, Gabe Bankman-Fried, is his brother.
Education
Sam Bankman-Fried represented the USA/Canada Mathcamp a summer program for high school students with mathematical aptitude. In Hillsborough, California, he graduated from Crystal Springs Uplands School for high school. Bankman-Fried studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2010 to 2014. He resided at Epsilon Theta, a coeducational group home there. He earned a physics degree and a minor in mathematics in 2014 and received his diploma.
Bankman-Fried started trading international ETFs in the summer of 2013 at Jane Street Capital, a proprietary trading company. After graduation, he went back there full-time after beginning as an intern. Bankman-Fried moved away from Jane Street in September 2017 and settled in Berkeley.
From October to November of that year, he served as the director of development at the Centre for Effective Altruism. In November 2017, he and Tara Mac Aulay from the Centre of Effective Altruism co-founded Alameda Research, a quantitative trading company. Bankman-Fried controlled around 90% of Alameda Research as of 2021.
Arbitrage Trade
In order to benefit from the higher price of bitcoin in Japan compared to America, Bankman-Fried organized an arbitrage trade in January 2018 that moved up to $25M per day. He relocated to Hong Kong after going to a cryptocurrency conference in Macau in late 2018. In April 2019, he founded FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, and the following month it went live.
It was revealed in September 2022 that Bankman-advisers Fried had proposed on his behalf to assist in financing Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Investment banker Michael Grimes reportedly wrote that Bankman-Fried would be willing to contribute up to $5 billion on April 25, 2022, according to messages made public as part of the lawsuit between Twitter and Musk during the latter’s proposed acquisition of Twitter.
Venture Capital Businesses
More than $500 million was invested in venture capital businesses by Bankman-Fried, including $200 million in Sequoia Capital. Sequoia issued a positive profile of Bankman-Fried, which it later took down after the FTX financial problem. According to Bankman-Fried, who has declared his support for effective altruism, earning to give is his chosen path in life.
He has pledged to give the vast majority of his wealth to successful charities over the course of his life and is a member of Giving What We Can. For this reason, he established the FTX Future Fund, which also included William MacAskill, one of the pioneers of the effective altruism movement. All members of the crew left after FTX’s failure. By September 1, 2022, Future Fund would have contributed $160 million in philanthropic gifts
