Parliamentarians summoned Sam Bankman-Fried, the 29-year-old multi-billionaire, this week to discuss digital asset legislation in his position as co-founder and managing director of the FTX bitcoin trading platform.
Less than three years after its creation, the company has just been valued at 32 billion dollars, a capitalization that brings it closer to the giants Coinbase and Binance. The personal fortune of Sam Bankman-Fried, who has become one of the most famous faces of cryptocurrencies, is estimated at nearly $25 billion by Forbes magazine, making him the 68th richest man on the planet. “The tone was rather consensual,” the young boss told AFP. Many senators sincerely want to know more about this market and the means the government has to better supervise it.
He has previously donated between $50 and $100 million to various charities.
Despite his fortune, Sam Bankman-Fried professes to live a spartan lifestyle, sleeping just four hours a night and having no plans to start a family. He connects with the movement of effective altruism, which seeks to focus gifts and resources in the most effective way possible based on a thorough examination of their consequences. The young man, who has promised to donate nearly all of his riches, says the difficulty is not just how to do good deeds in his lifetime, but what to focus on.
He thinks that he has previously donated between $50 and $100 million to organizations such as animal welfare (he himself is vegan), against neglected tropical diseases, or against global warming.
When asked about bitcoin’s environmental effects, which may contradict his devotion to the environment, the entrepreneur says he is certain that the process of manufacturing cryptocurrency, as well as transactions, will increasingly be carried out using renewable energy. On Sunday, the organization also sponsored a Super Bowl advertisement, giving bitcoin rewards to viewers who correctly predicted when the commercial would appear.
Sam Bankman-Fried, who was one of the largest donors to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020, has no problem with the quantities being made public, despite being aware of the stratospheric sums they brew. “Those are the things that people will find out if you’re aiming to have a major good effect on the world,” he remarked.
