Sam Bankman-Fried: 'Crypto genius' who lost $14.5 billion in a single day

business-standard.com:

Once deemed as the genius of the cryptocurrency world, Sam Bankman-Fried or SBF as he is known, has been in the news lately but for uncomfortable reasons. On November 9, FTX, the multi-dollar empire he built, came crashing down. The third-largest crypto exchange left scores of investors in a fray after reports of insufficient liquidity came up.

Suddenly, everybody was selling FTT, FTX's tokens, and Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, pulled out from the deal to rescue Bankman-Fried's exchange.

Bankman-Fried vanished from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index after his net worth just vaporised, falling 94 per cent in a single day. Before the news of the cash crunch broke, his net worth was around $15.5 billion. On late Tuesday, it was down to $991.5 million. Bankman-Fried holds a 53 per cent stake in FTX.

In the last seven days, FTX's price has fallen over 90 per cent to $2.32 on Thursday.

Who is Sam Bankman-Fried?

Sam Bankman-Fried, is the founder of FTX, once the third-largest crypto exchange in the world. Last week, he was among the most respectable, important people in the crypto world. Today, the 30-year-old is in the eye of the storm.

He completed his physics degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014. Bankman-Fried then spent three years as a trader at the quantitative trading firm Jane Street Capital.

In 2017, he started his trading firm, Alameda Research. In 2019, he launched FTX and made it into one of the leading exchanges for buying and selling crypto derivatives. In early 2022, according to Forbes, the exchange was valued at $40 billion.

Bankman-Fried described himself as a "selfless altruist, " often promising to donate most of his fortune to charity. He also pledged $1