In its 115-year-old rich history, the Economic Club of New York has hosted kings, prime ministers, presidents, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos. But probably the first person to play a computer game while giving a talk at it is 30-year-old crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried (also called SBF).
As the featured guest one morning of this club in February 2022, Bankman-Fried could be seen reclining on a gaming chair and wearing a grey T-shirt advertising his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, on his Zoom call, speaking from his office in the Bahamas. Such is how he reportedly lives both on and off screen.?His assistant says SBF sleeps most weekdays on his beanbag in office, as per?Bloomberg.
In Feb 2022 itself, singer Sia Furler had reportedly invited him to dinner at a Beverly Hills mansion with Jeff Bezos and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, In that party, SBF had chatted about crypto with pop star Katy Perry. The next day after chatting with the 30-year-old crypto billionaire, Katy Perry told her over 150 million followers on Instagram that ¡°I am quitting music and becoming an intern for @ftx_official ok bye"
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As per Bloomberg report, five years ago, Bankman-Fried was working for a charitable organization that promoted the then-fringe idea of ¡°effective altruism": using scientific reasoning to figure out how to do the most good for the most people. It was then that he spotted a seemingly too-good-to-be-true pricing anomaly in Bitcoin and decided that, for him, the right path would be making tons of money to give away.?
Now,?Bankman-Fried is one of the richest people in the world, with a fortune of more than $20 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
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For all his wealth, Bankman-Fried said that his core philosophy remains the same. He¡¯ll keep enough money to maintain a comfortable life: 1% of his earnings or, at minimum, $100,000 a year. Other than that, he still plans to give it all away every dollar, or Bitcoin, as the case may be.?
So, he¡¯s a kind of crypto Robin Hood, beating the rich at their own game to win money for capitalism¡¯s losers.?
As per Bloomberg, Bankman-Fried said he doesn¡¯t see much value in buying things, adding that ¡°You pretty quickly run out of really effective ways to make yourself happier by spending money. I don¡¯t want a yacht."
The crypto industry, which is often hit by scams, might seem like an odd choice for a do-gooder like SBF. But Bankman-Fried doesn¡¯t see it that way. SBF says his company FTX is running an honest market, checks customers¡¯ backgrounds, buys carbon credits to offset its emissions, and is more efficient than the mainstream financial system. But it¡¯s clear the main appeal for him is getting rich quick.
He also said ¡°Ideally, I would want FTX to become the biggest source of financial transactions in the world."
As by far the richest person to emerge from the effective altruism movement, a question that arises is whether should someone like Bankman-Fried who wants to save the world, first amass as much money and power as possible or will the pursuit towards money corrupt him along the way? It remains to be seen how far the crypto billionaire goes on to give away his billion-dollar fortune.
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