The fortunes being made in crypto, especially by CZ, were an inspiration. He’d made a good salary at Jane Street, and has said he donated more than half of it, but crypto offered even greater riches. Many employees at Jane Street were adherents of “effective altruism,” a philosophy that encourages taking high-paying jobs and giving much of it away to charity. Bitcoin’s price rallied, and Binance, which takes a cut of every transaction, made billions of dollars.īankman-Fried, meanwhile, took a job at Jane Street, a quantitative trading firm, after graduating from MIT. In 2017, CZ set up Binance, incorporated in the Cayman Islands, after a friend urged him to invest in Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency. Like many in crypto, CZ wasn’t a revolutionary looking to democratize finance, but a Wall Street alumnus who had worked for Bloomberg Tradebook. So whatever he did with the media, and to some extent with politicians, is just phenomenal,” CZ said.Īt the start of his career in crypto, Bankman-Fried, famous for his baggy cargo shorts and untamed shock of hair, wanted to get to know CZ, a bespectacled, wiry Chinese Canadian 15 years his senior. I’ve not seen presidents, I’ve not seen politicians, I’ve not seen Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk getting those types of treatments. But I had no answer to why some in the US media were lapping up Bankman-Fried’s every pronouncement. His high-water mark, in April 2022, came when FTX sponsored a crypto conference in the Bahamas, at which Bankman-Fried partied with Katy Perry and talked onstage with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. By January 2022, FTX had raised roughly $2 billion from some of the world’s biggest venture funds, at a $32 billion valuation. Is crypto the future of finance? Or will it wither away like many a grubby gold rush of the past?īack when I first met CZ, in May 2021, Bankman-Fried was the darling of US media, called the J.P. Now that FTX is in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, the trajectory of Binance-and of CZ-is a bellwether for the entire industry. The lawsuit alleges that Binance sent customer funds to a company controlled by CZ and evaded laws designed to protect American investors, among other things. The Securities and Exchange Commision, in June, filed civil charges against him and his company.
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Prosecutors allege Bankman-Fried stole $8 billion in customer funds to cover trading losses, make venture investments, and to enrich himself.Īt the peak of his career in 2022, Bankman-Fried lived in a $40 million Bahamas penthouse, took out a Super Bowl ad, lavished political donations on Republicans and Democrats, and enlisted celebrities including Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, and Steph Curry to promote FTX.ĬZ will be watching Bankman-Fried’s trial closely, although he’s got his own substantial legal battles to fight. Bankman-Fried’s trial on seven criminal counts, including alleged money laundering and wire fraud, kicks off in early October in a New York courtroom.
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