Who is Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto king who had a stunning downfall?
Sam Bankman-Fried, once known as a cryptocurrency whiz kid, was found guilty on Thursday for his role in the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. If given the maximum sentence, the 31-year-old former billionaire will go to prison for the rest of his life.
Bankman-Fried's spectacular fall from grace began nearly a year ago when FTX filed for bankruptcy, fueling a panic in the cryptocurrency industry.
Here's what you need to know about the former crypto king.
Bankman-Fried, known as SBF, began his career as a trader at Jane Street Capital after studying math and physics at MIT. In 2017, he left Jane Street to strike out on his own, starting a cryptocurrency hedge fund he called Alameda Research. The firm's first office was a two-bedroom Airbnb in North Berkeley, California.
"There were three of us, but it had an attic. So that seemed like a third bedroom to us," he testified last week.
His entrepreneurial drive didn't stop there: In 2019, Bankman-Fried co-founded cryptocurrency exchange FTX and became its CEO.
But Bankman-Fried testified Friday that he knew "basically nothing" about crypto.
"I had absolutely no idea how they worked…I just knew they were things you could trade," he said.
Bankman-Fried said he initially envisioned quickly selling FTX to cryptocurrency exchange Binance, since he "had no idea how we would get customers."
"I thought there was maybe a 20% chance of success" and an 80% chance it would shut down after a few months, he testified. "Even that 20% chance was a huge opportunity, given that the biggest exchanges at the time were multibillion-dollar companies."
He later hired his former Jane Street colleague Caroline Ellison as a trader at Alameda. She later became the firm's CEO and, at times, Bankman-Fried's girlfriend. She also became the prosecution's star witness, testifying that she and others carried out financial crimes under Bankman-Fried's direction.
