Thirty-year-old “wonder boy” Sam Bankman-Fried (often called SBF) was, at $21 billion, among the richest men on earth. Until a month ago, he was CEO of the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, FTX—valued at $32 billion. On the cover of Forbes and Fortune magazines, he was touted as a financial genius akin to Berkshire Hathaway’s billionaire financier, industrial magnate, and “philanthropist” Warren Buffett. But SBF’s FTX filed for bankruptcy in early November. A competitor, CoinDesk, apparently hacked its financial balance sheet and made it public, revealing grave discrepancies between FTX’s claimed worth and the reality of its investment portfolio. All hell broke lose as investors ran for the hills. In a matter of days most of FTX’s $32 billion evaporated.
Behind Sam Bankman-Fried’s Cryptocurrency Crash
