The embattled CEO of one of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges, FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, is currently worth less than $100,000.
The former crypto billionaire, worth $24 billion in March of last year, is starting the year facing charges and wondering how he will pay his legal team.
Bnakman-Fried, who pleaded not guilty to charges including defrauding investors of billions of dollars, is currently awaiting trial, which is set to begin in nine months.
The Fall
Sam Bankman Fried was the king of cryptocurrency until the recent market turmoil.
He went from being one of the wealthiest men in cryptocurrency to declaring bankruptcy in November when his companies, FTX and Alameda Research, failed.
Former Wall Street trader Sam Bankman-Fried and ex-Google employee Gary Wang founded FTX in 2019.
FTX Exchange was worth $32 billion at its peak. SBF’s wealth peaked at $26.5 billion due to his ownership of roughly half of FTX and a stake in its FTT tokens.
The history
The issue began in November 2022, when the cryptocurrency news website CoinDesk published a leaked balance sheet that revealed Alameda Research, Bankman-crypto Fried’s trading firm, was heavily reliant on FTX’s native token, FTT.
This was followed by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao liquidating all its holdings of FTT due to unspecified “recent revelations”, according to Reuters.
Binance’s move sparked panic, with thousands of investors rushing to withdraw all of their funds at once, destroying the FTX Exchange’s coffers and depreciating the value of the FTT.
Sam Bankman Fried’s net worth plummeted from a whopping $16 billion to a low of $991 million in a single day.
The decline lasted until December when SBF was forced to declare FTX bankrupt.
Sam Bankman-Fried is worth less than $100,000 in the early days of the new year and is currently living with his parents.
Suit Against SBF
SBF was extradited from The Bahamas to the United States on wire fraud and money laundering charges.
He is accused of diverting billions of dollars in investor funds to buy real estate, make political donations, and support Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency trading hedge fund.
If convicted, he faces a 115-year sentence.
Since March 2022, 17 of cryptocurrency’s wealthiest investors and founders have collectively lost an estimated $116 billion in personal wealth.
The biggest loser is Binance’s founder Changpeng Zhao, whose fortune has dropped from $65 billion in early March 2022 to $4.5 billion today.
