Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried represents a new breed of entrepreneurs who think obsessively — and, at times, counterintuitively — about the value of becoming rich. Their civic-mindedness doesn’t lead them into do-gooder careers, but into earn-earn-earn careers where they can maximize their fortunes. And Bankman-Fried has ridden the crypto boom. Protect Our Future, a Super PAC seeded by Bankman-Fried has spent heavily supporting candidates “who take a long-term view on policy planning” around areas like pandemic preparedness and prevention. The founder of a rapidly growing startup called FTX, which offers a platform for people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, Bankman-Fried now considers $10 billion a “reasonable” estimate of his wealth and progress to date. Bankman-Fried turned heads over the last year when he became one of Silicon Valley’s biggest contributors to groups supporting Joe Biden, at least in terms of disclosed giving. He donated about as much to Democrats as did famous tech titans like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt or Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday March 28 2024 to 25 years in prison for a massive fraud that unraveled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world’s most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency.