At the age of 30, he became one of the youngest billionaires, with a fortune of $ 26 billion, and just a few months later it was zero. Until recently a darling of Western media, today Sam Bankman-Fried is back in the spotlight, but in a bitter way. The cryptocurrency exchange he founded, FTX, filed for bankruptcy late last week in one of the most chaotic crashes of US companies. This has led to withdrawals from other exchangesbut for now the contagion seems limited.
FTX seemed like a shining example of a cryptocurrency exchange that does everything right and has low trading fees. Run by Sam Bankman-Fried, a former multibillionaire considered by many to be a genius who confronts members of Congress and calls for “careful regulatory leadership,” FTX and its subsidiaries have brought cryptocurrencies into the mainstream. They spent millions in a Super Bowl ad comparing cryptocurrencies to the invention of the wheel and the light bulb, urging customers not to “miss out” on the “next big thing” and promoting FTX as “an easy and secure way to get into cryptocurrencies .” Within a week the empire collapsed.
Fall from above
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index he currently estimates SBF’s fortune, as it is known in crypto circles, at one dollar. This includes his 70% stake in FTX’s US business. Bankman-Fried also has a stake in Robinhood, which is valued at more than $500 million, but that, too, was removed from his fortune after Reuters revealed his stake was held through his trading house Alameda Research. It’s also in the failed companies package.
However, Bloomberg points out that the media company’s index may not account for all of SBF’s assets, such as Alameda’s $1 billion in profits last year, as well as hundreds of millions of FTX that may have been distributed to its shareholders and its creator. Additionally, The Information reported last week that Bankman-Fried owns more than half a billion dollars in funds managed by Sequoia and other private equity firms, and is also a shareholder in media platform Semafor. If these assets are held through Alameda, however, they will also be attributed to its losses. The write-off of Bankman-Fried’s fortunes is also happening at a pace unprecedented in corporate history, Bloomberg points out. So was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States. The corporate lawyers commented to foreign media that they have rarely seen such a chaotic filing of documents that lacks justifications and reasons for filing for bankruptcy protection as well as any restructuring plan.
