In May 2019 the MIT graduate Sam Bankman-Fried together with Gary Wang founded FTX cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in The Bahamas. Within years, sometime early this year, his net worth passed $26 billion. By the way he is just 30 years old, born March 6, 1992.
Anyone would wonder: what a successful man is this young guy!!!
A magic boy.
Along with Sam’s extraordinary shining business success, he started to appear as ‘crypto Robinhood’ in media outlets:
In April 2022, Bloomberg published an article titled:
„A 30-Year-Old Crypto Billionaire Wants to Give His Fortune Away: Sam Bankman-Fried drives a Corolla, sleeps on a beanbag, and has a Robin Hood-like philosophy.“
Before that in February 24, 2021 Cointelegraph reported the following:
„Sam Bankman-Fried: The crypto whale who wants to give billions away.„
The column by Andrew Fenton wrote something very interesting:
„Unlike most people in crypto though, he’s building up a fortune in order to give half of it away. An ‘effective altruist’ he’s essentially robbing from the rich, via his preternatural crypto trading strategies, in order to give to the poor.“
This makes Sam Bankman-Fried, in short SBF, a perfect Robinhood.
June 2022 business magazine Fortune wrote:
„Giant crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried promises to give away most of his $21 billion fortune“
Tweet from SBF, February 2021 (Image Source: Twitter)
So it looks like Sam will give away billions of dollars to charities to help the poor, instead records say he had millions in political donations including 2020 Joe Biden’s election campaign. May be Sam wanted to convince the politicians about crypto to bring it more to mainstream financial world, something that would benefit millions or billions of people around the globe. Who knows!
Whatever it is: Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX saga collapsed all on a sudden after Coindesk published a report on 2nd November: „Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda’s Balance Sheet“.
The report showed a deeper, intertwined financial relationship between FTX and Alameda Research. Alameda Research is a crypto trading firm founded by SBF in 2017.
November 11, FTX filed for bankruptcy. CEO of the company Sam Bankman-Fried resigned.
November 12, Dailymail reported that SBF allegedly shuffled $10billion in funds to his trading firm Alameda Research, with about $2billion now missing.
By the way, Alameda Research, the crypto trading firm, is run by Sam’s alleged girlfriend, Caroline Ellison.
More interesting: Sunday, November 13, Dailymail reported: „FTX founder and two senior execs are ‘under observation by authorities’ holed-up in luxurious Bahamas resort owned by Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake – as they ‘plot escape to non-extradition safe haven Dubai’“
Also the same day, Dailymail reported: „$515m is STOLEN from collapsed crypto exchange FTX in matter of hours… but is it hackers or an inside job?“
The FTX drama already shaked the whole crypto world but its full impact is still to come.
Alas! We missed a Robinhood.