The famous Samuel Bankman-Fried, also known by his initials SBF, is an American entrepreneur, investor, and founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, FTX.US, and quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research.
In September 2017, Bankman-Fried left Jane Street and moved to Berkeley, where he worked briefly at the Centre for Effective Altruism as director of development from October to November 2017. In November 2017, he founded Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm along with Tara Mac Aulay from the Centre of Effective Altruism.
As of 2021, Bankman-Fried owned approximately 90% of Alameda Research. In January 2018, Bankman-Fried 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. After attending a late 2018 cryptocurrency conference in Macau, he moved to Hong Kong. He founded FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, in April 2019, and it then launched the following month.
Where does Sam Bankman-Fried live? Inside the FTX boss’ Bahamas home
Bankman-Fried is vegan. As of mid-2021, he lived in a 5-bedroom penthouse in the Bahamas with about ten roommates. After the collapse of FTX, the penthouse was put up for sale for close to $40 million.
According to former employees of FTX and Alameda, Bankman-Fried was romantically involved with co-worker Caroline Ellison, the CEO at Alameda Research.
He is a fan of the video game League of Legends and allegedly played the game while on a call attempting to secure an investment from Sequoia Capital. An article by the Financial Times characterized Bankman-Fried’s win ratios in League of Legends as average-to-bad.