25 June 2021
In 2021, one of Hong Kong’s richest people — indeed, the world’s richest person under 30 years old — is not an old-money-family heir but a U.S. native who built his fortune in the cutting-edge world of cryptocurrency.
Sam Bankman-Fried is worth $8.7 billion, according to Forbes. But that number could get “a lot bigger” depending on the outcome of a fundraising round that he says will sharply increase the valuation of FTX, the Hong-Kong based crypto derivative exchange he founded in 2019.
Bankman-Fried himself garnered public attention when he donated over $5 million to a group backing Joe Biden’s campaign, making the newcomer to political spending one of the U.S. president’s biggest donors.
Meanwhile, the crypto billionaire is continuing to pursue his initial goal of making impactful donations. FTX, which is committed to donating 1% of its revenue, has so far donated $10 million to charities including Open AI, a research lab that works to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits humanity, and the Humane League, which seeks to end the abuse of animals raised for food.
Born to Stanford Law School professor parents, Bankman-Fried graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a major in physics and initially wanted to pursue a career in academia.
But then the “effective altruism” movement — a philanthropic philosophy that encourages people to maximize their donations’ impact with the use of data — prompted him to work in finance in a bid to earn quick money and then give it away to charities.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-Spotlight/Hong-Kong-s-29-year-old-crypto-billionaire-FTX-s-Sam-Bankman-Fried