Sam Bankman-Fried, a 25-year-old MIT graduate, left the quantitative trading firm Jane Street in 2017 to start his own hedge fund, Alameda Research. At first, the crypto-centric fund focused on low-risk algorithmic trades.
After two years of running the business, Bankman-Fried embarked on the ambitious goal of starting a crypto trading exchange that would become FTX.
During crypto’s bull run, things went smoothly for Bankman-Fried as big names in finance like SoftBank and Sequoia backed his venture. His net worth ballooned to $26.5 billion toward the end of 2021, around the time when Bitcoin’s price was hitting all-time highs.
Asset values plummeted this year, however, as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has ushered in a new era of tighter monetary policy. Crypto, particularly FTX’s own token, FTT, was no exception….