Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried, also known simply as SBF, is an American cryptocurrency trader.

He was a cofounder and CEO of the embattled cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the associated Alameda Research. He is the son of Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, and brother of Gabe Bankman-Fried.¹⁾

SBF was born March 6, 1992 in Stanford, California on the campus of Stanford University.^{2) 3)}

He attended Crystal Springs Uplands School, described as “a top Silicon Valley prep school.”^{4) 5)} As a high school student, Bankman-Fried attended Canada/USA Mathcamp, a summer program for mathematically talented youth. There he met his future business partners Sam Trabucco (co-CEO of Alameda) and Gary Wang (co-founder and CTO of FTX).^{6) 7)}

During his third year as a physics major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bankman-Fried was exposed to effective altruism at a talk by William MacAskill on the ethics of career choice.⁸⁾

Upon graduating from MIT, Bankman-Fried joined Jane Street Capital, a quantitative trading firm and liquidity provider, where he worked as a trader and designed the firm's automated off-exchange trading system. While working at Jane Street, Bankman-Fried gave about half of his salary to charity, primarily to animal causes.⁹⁾ After serving briefly as director of development at the Centre for Effective Altruism, he founded Alameda Research in 2017 and FTX two years later.

More recently, he has contributed to organizations working in global poverty, climate change, AI safety, biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.¹⁰⁾

Bankman-Fried signed Bill Gates' “The Giving Pledge” in June 2022.¹¹⁾

In 2020, SBF donated $5.2 million to Future Forward USA (a super-PAC affiliated with Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz) supporting Joe Biden, becoming one of the president's top donors.^{12) 13)}

During the 2021-2022 election cycle, he contributed $5,000 to BFB PAC.¹⁴⁾ He also gave $6 million to House Majority Forward in 2022.¹⁵⁾

SBF was arrested in the Bahamas on December 12, 2022.¹⁶⁾ A 14-page indictment was filed that alleged “numerous and varied” campaign finance violations, including conspiring with others to make, receive and hide illegal campaign contributions.