Sam Bankman-Fried

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sam Bankman-Fried
Born (1992-03-06) March 6, 1992 (age 29)
Stanford, California, United States
NationalityUnited States
EducationBA Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
OccupationEntrepreneur
Known forCEO of FTX
CEO of Alameda Research

Sam Bankman-Fried (born March 6, 1992) is the founder and CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange.[1][2] He also manages assets through Alameda Research, a quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm he founded in October 2017.[3]

Biography[]

Early life and education[]

Bankman-Fried was born in 1992 on the campus of Stanford University, the son of Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both law professors from Stanford Law School.[4] When he was about 14 years old, his mother noticed that he had spontaneously developed an interest in utilitarianism.[4] Later, he attended Canada/USA Mathcamp, a summer program for mathematically talented high school students.[4]

From 2010 to 2014, Bankman-Fried attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[4] There, he lived in a coeducational group house called Epsilon Theta.[4] In 2012, he blogged about utilitarianism, baseball, and politics.[2][4] In 2014, he graduated with a degree in physics.[4][5][6]

Career[]

Bankman-Fried started his career at Jane Street Capital, a proprietary trading firm,[4] trading international ETFs.[7] In September 2017, he quit Jane Street and moved to Berkeley, where he was briefly the director of the Centre for Effective Altruism from October to November 2017.[4][8] In November 2017, he founded Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm.[4] (As of 2021, FTX owns approximately 90% of Alameda Research[4].)

In January 2018, he organized an arbitrage trade, moving up to $25M per day, to take advantage of the higher price of bitcoin in Japan compared to in America.[4][8] After attending a late 2018 cryptocurrency conference in Macau, and while also inspired by the concurrent fork of Bitcoin Cash, he moved to Hong Kong.[4][9] He founded FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, in April 2019, and it then launched the following month.[4]

Bankman-Fried was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 (Finance) list in 2021.[10]

Philanthropy[]

Bankman-Fried is a supporter of effective altruism and pursues earning to give as an altruistic career.[11] He is a member of Giving What We Can and plans to donate the great majority of his wealth to effective charities over the course of his life.[1]

His company FTX has a policy of donating 1% of its revenue to charity.[11][12] He was one of the largest CEO donors to Joe Biden in the 2020 election cycle, personally donating $5.2 million, second to only Michael Bloomberg.[11][13]

Personal life[]

Bankman-Fried is a vegan.[2][4][6] He sleeps four hours per night, when he has no meetings, on a bean bag chair in his office next to his computer;[4][9] in fact, he ensures that every room in his office has bean bag chairs to sleep on.[6] He shares an apartment with roommates.[6] He almost never drinks or goes on vacation.[6] He often uses the Latin verb quaere (meaning "ask yourself") in conversations.[4]

Bankman-Fried describes himself morally as a "Benthamite" and a "a total, act, hedonistic/one level (as opposed to high and low pleasure), classical (as opposed to negative) utilitarian".[4]

References[]

  1. ^ a b Schleifer, Theodore (March 20, 2021). "How a crypto billionaire decided to become one of Biden's biggest donors". Vox.
  2. ^ a b c Wallace, Benjamin (February 2, 2021). "The Mysterious Cryptocurrency Magnate Who Became One of Biden's Biggest Donors". Intelligencer.
  3. ^ "Sam Bankman-Fried". Forbes. Retrieved April 30, 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Parloff, Roger (August 12, 2021). "Portrait of a 29-year-old billionaire: Can Sam Bankman-Fried make his risky crypto business work?". finance.yahoo.com. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  5. ^ "The Team". Alameda Research. Retrieved April 19, 2021.
  6. ^ a b c d e Chan, Michelle (June 25, 2021). "Hong Kong's 29-year-old crypto billionaire: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried". Nikkei Asia. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  7. ^ "The Ex-Trader Building a Multi-Billion Crypto Empire (Podcast)". Bloomberg.com. March 31, 2021. Retrieved October 1, 2021.
  8. ^ a b Wallace, Benjamin (February 2, 2021). "The Mysterious Cryptocurrency Magnate Who Became One of Biden's Biggest Donors". Intelligencer. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  9. ^ a b Lipton, Eric; Livni, Ephrat (August 19, 2021). "Crypto Nomads: Surfing the World for Risk and Profit". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  10. ^ "Sam Bankman-Fried". Forbes. Retrieved July 28, 2021.
  11. ^ a b c Osipovich, Alexander (April 16, 2021). "This Vegan Billionaire Disrupted the Crypto Markets. Stocks May Be Next". Wall Street Journal.
  12. ^ "FTX". ftx.com. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
  13. ^ "Crypto firm ropes in Gisele, Tom Brady to burnish green credentials". South China Morning Post. July 1, 2021. Retrieved July 28, 2021.
Retrieved from ""