Sam Bankman-Fried, with a current wealth (according to Forbes magazine) of 26,500 million dollars is, apart from one of the great tycoons on the planet, the richest twentysomething in the world and second in all history with the permission of Mark Zuckerberg . At just 29 years old, this Californian is considered one of the biggest beneficiaries of the rise of this digital currency.
Founder and CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange where users can exchange fiat money for bitcoin or Ethereum, Bankman-Fried grew up reading Harry Potter, watching San Francisco Giants games and playing video games like Starcraft and League of Legends. Legends. In 2014 he finished his Physics degree, which led him to consider becoming a teacher and thus follow in the footsteps of his parents.
His first big job came at Jane Street Capital, where Bankman-Fried put nearly all of his six-figure salary into donations. Three years later, in 2017, he decided to found his first company, Alameda Research, for which an investment of 1 million dollars was necessary. It was his first contact with arbitration and he couldn’t have started better, since in January 2018 he was moving 25 million bitcoins a day. “I got into cryptocurrencies with no idea what they were,” she says.
Like any good entrepreneur, Bankman-Fried stepped up with these crypto exchanges and founded FTX, his current company which brings him a 50% profit. This firm has experienced such growth that in 2020 it has gone from having 200,000 users with whom it operated 1,000 million transactions per day to, in 2021, having 2 million users. “He’s a phenomenon, he’s accomplished a lot so far and he’s respected by investors,” says well-known businessman Kevin O’Leary.
“We should not think that cryptocurrencies will be the most fertile ground to work forever”
Money calls money and proof of this is the speed with which many investors were seduced by Sam Bankman-Fried. In January 2020, venture capital firms such as Pantera Capital and Exnetwork Capital pumped $40 million into a business valued at $1.2 billion. After six months, all the venture capitalists wanted a piece of FTX. As a sign of its growth, in 2019 it bought back its stake from Binance for $2.3 billion (six months earlier, Binance injected about $70 million into FTX).
Cryptocurrencies have given Sam Bankman-Fried a lot, although he knows that it is not a business in which he has much faith. He is by no means a crypto evangelist. In fact, he has said on more than one occasion that if a business model arises in which he believes more, or even gives him more money, he will not think twice about investing in it and leave cryptocurrencies to himself. a side. “There is a wide world out there, but we should not think that cryptocurrencies will be the most fertile ground to work forever.”
Now, Bankman-Fried is involved in marketing operations related to his company. In June 2021 he paid 210 million dollars to stamp his signature on TSM, a leading team in electronic sports (e-sports), renaming this company TSM FTX. He also agreed to purchase the naming rights to the arena from the Miami Heat for $135 million, taking over from American Airlines as sponsor of the arena’s name. And finally, he launched a $30 million ad campaign to promote FTX through ambassadors like Shark Tank’s O’Leary, NFL legend Tom Brady and NBA superstar Stephen Curry. All three have capital in FTX.
His legacy
One of the maxims of this young millionaire is to donate his fortune to charitable causes. The goal of the founder of FTX is to continue amassing money to then donate it, although at the moment he is one of the least charitable billionaires, since he has only donated 0.1% of his fortune, approximately 25 million dollars. However, Sam Bankman-Fried has promised that he will exponentially multiply his donations if his finances continue to grow as they are now. “There’s a lot of work to be done,” he admits, explaining that major donations “are not a short-term goal, they’re a long-term goal.”
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