American entrepreneur, millionaire and investor, founder and CEO of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. At the peak of its prosperity in 2021, FTX was one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, the number of its users exceeded a million. Bankman-Fried also managed the assets of Alameda Research[en], a cryptocurrency trading company he founded in October 2017.
The success of FTX brought Bankman-Fried enormous wealth — in the Forbes list of billionaires for 2022, he ranked 41st in the United States and 60th worldwide. He owned half of the crypto exchange, as well as a large number of FTT tokens issued by it – Bankman-Fried’s fortune at one time reached 26.5 billion US dollars. In November 2022, FTX and its closely related Alameda Research went bankrupt, and the Bankman-Fried fortune ceased to exist within days. In December of the same year, the businessman was arrested in the Bahamas; the US authorities charged Bankman-Fried with fraud and money laundering. In November 2023, he was found guilty on seven counts, sentencing is expected in March 2024.
