How a crypto empire built on video game battles and beanbags came crashing down.
It took fewer than eight days for Sam Bankman-Fried to go from being nicknamed the "King Of Crypto" to his company filing for bankruptcy and him stepping down as CEO, potentially facing federal investigations in to how he handled the company's finances.
According to a blog post from venture capital giant Sequoia Capital, Mr Bankman-Fried played an intense League of Legend's battle during a high-level video call with their investment team. FTX had an estimated 1.2 million registered users who were using the exchange to buy cryptocurrency tokens like Bitcoin and thousands of others.
So, as Bankman-Fried recalls, he decided to get into banking to make as much money as he could to give it back to good causes. "We were super dogged" he said to the Jax Jones and Martin Warner Show podcast a year ago. "We just kept going. If someone throws another roadblock we would be creative and if our system couldn't handle that we would just build a new system to get us through that hoop."A business reporter at CNBC asked him recently how that felt.
All the while, Mr Bankman-Fried seemingly delighted in giving his Twitter followers an insight into his lifestyle. He mainly sleeps on a bean bag next to his desk in the office, he said with a picture of him lying next to his staff at their trading terminals."Mostly I sleep on a beanbag," Mr Bankman-Fried told his Twitter followers
With the price of cryptocurrencies falling in 2022, the so-called "Crypto Winter" is in full swing. While other companies in the industry faltered, Mr Bankman-Fried was handing out bailout cash in the hundreds of millions.
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