Sam Bankman-Fried

Bankman-Fried’s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, are both professors at Stanford Law School. He is their eldest child and as a boy entertained himself with baseball statistics and math puzzles; he attended the private high school Crystal Springs Uplands and then enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), initially imagining he might become a physicist. In his sophomore year he learned about the “effective altruism” movement, some of whose adherents pursue high-paying careers in order to give most of their earnings to causes that do the most good. He received a degree in physics from MIT in 2014.⁠[1][2][1][1][1][1][1][2]

After graduating in 2014, he joined Jane Street Capital, a trading firm that uses mathematical models to find price discrepancies between securities markets. He has said he gave away about half of what he made at Jane Street, mostly to animal-welfare organizations and the Centre for Effective Altruism; he left after about three years.⁠[1][1][1][1]

He noticed that bitcoin prices were often quoted differently on different exchanges, giving traders skilled at algorithmic programming a chance to arbitrage across markets. In 2017, he and a colleague, Tara Mac Aulay, began trading crypto with their own money on various exchanges; Caroline Ellison, his math-camp friend Gary Wang, who had worked at Google, and Nishad Singh, among others, later joined, and the group made the fund official under the name Alameda Research, with Bankman-Fried as its first CEO. Alameda often made aggressive bets with high-interest borrowed money, and a few months after launching it lost about two-thirds of its assets on a bet on XRP.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][3]

Mac Aulay and some other employees then left Alameda; she later wrote on Twitter that the departures were partly caused by “concerns over risk management and business ethics.” Bankman-Fried rebuilt the fund and moved it to Hong Kong.⁠[1]

In 2019, he and Gary Wang founded the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, with Bankman-Fried as CEO. Regulators later said that from at least May 2019 he controlled both FTX.com and Alameda, FTX’s primary market maker; from that time FTX raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors, including about $1.1 billion from about 90 U.S.-based investors. Under his leadership FTX quickly became the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume.⁠[3][4][5][4][6]

In March 2021, Bankman-Fried, then 28, said an estimate of his net worth at about $10 billion was “reasonable”; his self-described two-part plan was to make as much money as possible and then give it all away by the most effective means. He had become one of the major donors to groups supporting Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. election, a decision he said he reached by calculating the impact of each dollar donated.⁠[7][7][7][7][7]

In September 2021, FTX moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas and registered a subsidiary there; Bankman-Fried said the Bahamas was among the first countries to introduce comprehensive crypto regulation, that the move had been planned for some time, and that it was not a response to China’s declaration at the time that all crypto transactions were illegal.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

In February 2022, he testified before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee, arguing for regulatory clarity for crypto markets and setting out FTX’s principles for protecting investors, including maintaining adequate liquid resources to return customers’ assets on request. In the 2021–2022 election cycle, his $39.8 million in public donations made him the Democratic Party’s second-largest individual donor, behind only George SorosGeorge SorosGeorge Soros is an American investor and philanthropist, the founder of the hedge fund Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Foundations. He is known for macro trading and for shorting the British pound in 1992, is also a major political donor on the side of the U.S. Democratic Party, and has long been at the center of political controversy and conspiracy theories.Open the full entry; he had predicted he would spend more than $100 million in the 2024 elections, with a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion, but later withdrew the prediction, calling it “dumb.”⁠[9][9][9][10][10][10]

Through Emergent Fidelity Technologies, an Antigua and Barbuda company of which he was sole director and majority owner, he bought 56,273,469 shares of Robinhood Markets, about 7.6% of its outstanding shares, and filed a Schedule 13D with the SEC on May 12, 2022, with a triggering event date of May 2.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11]

On November 2, 2022, CoinDeskCoinDeskCoinDesk is a cryptocurrency media, events, index, and data company founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York. Its businesses include the CoinDesk news website, the annual crypto industry conference Consensus, and the CoinDesk Indices index business. In November 2023, the digital asset exchange Bullish acquired CoinDesk from Digital Currency Group, and CoinDesk has since operated as an independent subsidiary of Bullish.Open the full entry reported that Alameda held almost $15 billion in crypto assets, a large share of it in FTT, a token issued by FTX, raising questions about conflicts of interest between the two nominally independent companies; Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao then said on Twitter that Binance would dump its FTT-linked holdings, and FTX subsequently saw about $5 billion in withdrawals on a single Sunday.⁠[1][1][10]

On November 8, Binance said that after FTX asked for help it had signed a non-binding letter of intent to acquire FTX, with Zhao noting that Binance could pull out at any time; Bankman-Fried said the important thing was that customers were protected. The next day Binance abandoned the deal after reviewing FTX’s books, and Bankman-Fried’s net worth fell in a single day from $15.6 billion to potentially below $1 billion. On Friday, November 11, FTX filed for bankruptcy protection; earlier that year FTX had been valued at $32 billion in a financing round.⁠[12][12][12][12][6][10][6][5][12]

After FTX’s collapse, he told the crypto commentator Tiffany Fong that he had donated about the same amount to both parties and that all his Republican donations were undisclosed, because reporters reacted strongly to donations to Republicans and he did not want that fight; public data show that his disclosed donations went overwhelmingly to Democrats, with only about $235,000 going to Republican candidates. Republican Senator Ted Cruz called FTX “a Bernie Madoff style fraud” and asked whether Biden and the Democrats who took his donations would give the money back to victims.⁠[9][9][9][9][9][9][9]

On the evening of December 12, 2022, Bahamian authorities arrested Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. government, based on a sealed indictment from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and the Attorney General of the Bahamas said he would be held under the country’s Extradition Act; he had been due to testify before the U.S. Congress about FTX’s collapse the next day and was unable to appear. Before his arrest he told the BBCBBCThe BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is the United Kingdom’s public broadcaster. Its predecessor was the British Broadcasting Company, formed in 1922, and since 1927 it has been established under a Royal Charter. It provides television, radio, and online services in the UK, is funded mainly by the television licence fee, and broadcasts worldwide in multiple languages through BBC World Service.Open the full entry that he had not knowingly committed fraud and did not think he had committed fraud, denied knowing that Alameda was using FTX customer funds, but acknowledged that as CEO he was responsible for the mishandling of funds.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13]

On December 13, 2022, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment charging Bankman-Fried with wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering, among other offenses; the same day he appeared in a magistrates’ court in Nassau, the Bahamas, to seek bail.⁠[5][1]

The same day, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged him with defrauding FTX’s equity investors, alleging that for years he concealed from investors the diversion of FTX customer funds to Alameda, Alameda’s virtually unlimited “line of credit” and exemption from risk controls, and the use of commingled customer funds for venture investments, luxury real estate, and political donations; SEC Chair Gary Gensler said he had “built a house of cards on a foundation of deception.” The SEC sought injunctions, disgorgement, a civil penalty, and an officer and director bar.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4]

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued him, FTX, and Alameda the same day in federal court in the Southern District of New York, alleging fraud and material misrepresentations in the sale of digital commodities that caused the loss of more than $8 billion in customer deposits, and alleging that at his direction FTX employees added an undisclosed “allow negative” feature to the code that let Alameda withdraw billions of dollars in customer assets from FTX.⁠[5][5][5][5]

Bankman-Fried agreed to voluntary extradition and landed in New York on the night of December 21. While he was in the air, Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang had pleaded guilty to charges related to the fraud behind FTX’s collapse and were cooperating with investigators. The SEC also alleged that Ellison, at his direction, bought FTT to prop up its price, and that FTT served as collateral for FTX’s undisclosed loans of customer assets to Alameda.⁠[14][14][14][14][14]

Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond and placed under house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California, wearing a monitoring device and having surrendered his passport. On January 3, 2023, his lawyer Mark Cohen entered a plea of not guilty to all counts on his behalf in federal court in Manhattan, and the judge set a trial date of October 2; if convicted on all counts, he faced up to 115 years in prison. Prosecutor Danielle Sassoon said FTX’s collapse may have had more than 1 million victims.⁠[15][15][15][15][15]

By February 2023, the charges against Bankman-Fried had grown to 12, all of which he denied; on February 28, former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh pleaded guilty to six charges, including three counts of conspiracy to commit fraud. Later added charges included violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying a $40 million bribe to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze Alameda accounts.⁠[16][16][16][3]

On August 11, 2023, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan found probable cause to believe Bankman-Fried had “attempted to tamper with witnesses at least twice” and revoked his bail; he was handcuffed in court and taken away to await trial. The trigger was a July New York Times article quoting Caroline Ellison’s private writings; prosecutors said he had given the documents to the reporter to portray Ellison as having acted alone, and that he had taken part in roughly 1,000 phone calls with the press in recent months. He denied the claims, and his lawyers said the documents were already known to the reporter and that he had a right to speak to the media.⁠[17][17][17][17][17][17][17]

On October 3, 2023, Bankman-Fried went on trial in federal court in Manhattan before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, beginning with jury selection, in a trial expected to last about six weeks. He faced seven conspiracy and fraud counts, accused of diverting investors’ money into risky trades and using customer funds to repay Alameda’s loans, buy real estate, and make political donations; prosecutors said they had made no plea offer. Five further charges, including the bribery charge, had been slated for a second trial.⁠[18][18][18][18][18][18][3]

At trial, Gary Wang and Caroline Ellison both answered “Yes” when asked whether they had committed crimes while working at FTX. Wang testified that before the collapse Alameda owed roughly $14 billion it could not repay, and, asked about Bankman-Fried’s tweet that “assets are fine,” said that “FTX was not fine, and assets were not fine.” Ellison testified over three days that Bankman-Fried directed her to commit the crimes, telling her to take about $10 billion of FTX customer money to repay Alameda’s lenders, and described how he used utilitarianism to justify fraud.⁠[19][19][19][20][19][20]

Against conventional legal wisdom, Bankman-Fried took the stand in his own defense, and the defense argued that he had acted as any rational businessperson would in difficult market conditions and never intended to defraud anyone. In closing arguments on November 1, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Roos said he had built “a pyramid of deceit” on “a foundation of lies and false promises” and had lied on the witness stand. On the evening of November 2, the jury found him guilty on all seven fraud and conspiracy counts; he faced up to 115 years in prison.⁠[21][21][22][22][23][21][21]

On December 29, 2023, prosecutors told the federal court in Manhattan that they would not hold a second trial on six charges severed from the first trial, including campaign finance violations, conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, citing the “strong public interest” in a prompt resolution and the fact that the Bahamas had yet to consent to a trial on those charges. His lawyers declined to comment.⁠[23][23][23][23]

On March 28, 2024, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison, calling the defense’s arguments misleading and finding that he had obstructed justice and tampered with witnesses in his defense; the judge also ordered him to pay $11 billion. Prosecutors had sought up to 50 years (by another account, they recommended 40 to 50 years), while the defense asked for no more than six and a half years (by another account, his lawyer suggested five and a quarter years or fewer). Wearing a jail jumpsuit, he apologized in court, saying he had made a series of “selfish” decisions, “threw it all away,” and that “it haunts me every day.”⁠[24][24][25][24][26][24]

Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said he had orchestrated one of the largest frauds in financial history, and Attorney General Merrick Garland said there are “serious consequences for defrauding customers and investors.” His parents said through a spokesperson that they were “heartbroken” and would keep fighting for their son; the defense had sought leniency citing mental health struggles and his personal generosity, and argued that FTX users had not ultimately suffered substantial losses, a claim FTX’s current administrator John Ray called false in a letter to the judge.⁠[24][24][24][24][24]

On April 11, 2024, Bankman-Fried appealed his conviction and 25-year sentence to the Manhattan-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; his lawyer Marc Mukasey had announced the plan at the sentencing hearing. He needed to persuade the appeals court that Judge Kaplan had made significant errors that deprived him of his legal rights and made the trial unfair.⁠[26][26][26][26]

In March 2025, Bankman-Fried gave an unauthorized video interview from prison to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, criticizing former President Biden and former SEC Chair Gensler; he may have been placed in solitary confinement as a result and was said to be seeking a pardon from President Trump. The Federal Bureau of Prisons then moved him from the Brooklyn detention center via a transit center in Oklahoma to a medium-security prison in Victorville, California, and in April 2025 to the low-security prison at Terminal Island in Los Angeles; the sentencing judge had recommended that he be held in California to be closer to his parents.⁠[27][25][27][27][27][27][27]

On November 4, 2025, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard his appeal. His appellate lawyer Alexandra Shapiro argued in a brief that he “was never presumed innocent” but “was presumed guilty — before he was even charged,” accused Judge Kaplan of “repeatedly putting a thumb on the scale to help the government and thwart the defense,” and asked for a new trial before a different judge; the defense also argued that the judge wrongly barred him from telling the jury that FTX had enough assets to repay customers and from testifying that he followed FTX lawyers’ advice in good faith, and challenged the $11 billion forfeiture order.⁠[25][25][25][25][25][25][25]

In 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Bankman-Fried’s appeal arguments and upheld the judgment.⁠[28]

On September 10, 2026, Bankman-Fried asked the U.S. Supreme Court to order a new trial and to throw out the order requiring him to pay $11 billion. He argued that if prosecutors need not prove economic loss under the “fraudulent inducement” theory of fraud, they should not be allowed to introduce evidence of loss, or he should at least be allowed to show that his investments would have covered FTX customers’ losses; he also argued that the $11 billion forfeiture violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines. Veteran Supreme Court attorney Jeffrey Fisher told CNN that introducing loss evidence is distracting and prejudicial where victims did not actually lose money and the defendant cannot make that clear. The Supreme Court was to consider the petition later that year.⁠[28][28][28][28][28][28][28]