Crypto Billionaire: My goal is to figure out how to have the biggest impact on the world

If greed is good, then Sam Bankman-Fried is elite. The 29-year-old founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, recently worth more than $10 billion, has amassed wealth faster than anyone in modern history, making even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg look more like a tortoise than a hare.

But Bankman Freed's greed was unlike any other of the world's richest men. While his unabashed goal was to get rich, his goal from day one was to allow him to do more charity.

As a believer in the increasingly popular philosophy of “effective altruism,” Bankman-Fried began methodically analyzing how he could do the most good in his life. While in college, he briefly considered working for philanthropy or Wall Street before deciding that the best way to reap the rewards of the life he had prepared was to get rich.

Speaking on the virtual stage at the opening of the 2021 Forbes Under 30 Summit on May 26, local time, Bankman-Fried explained how he founded one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in order to make the greatest possible contribution to the future of humanity. "Whatever works, it's good," Bankman-Fried said in a conversation with Forbes Chief Content Officer Randall Lane. "In the end, my goal is just to figure out how I can have the biggest impact on the world, whatever that means."

Effective altruism was first popularized in the late 2000s by Oxford professor Toby Ord and entered the mainstream in 2015 with bioethicist Peter Singer’s book, The Most Good You Can Do, published by Yale University Press.

Although he earned a degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014, Bankman-Fried said he systematically analyzed his life to determine that working for a cause he believed in or creating a company was the best way to make the greatest contribution.

Bankman-Fried started out as a brilliant trader at Jane Street Quantitative Trading, when he became fascinated by the emerging world of cryptocurrency. He was disappointed with his experience with traditional exchanges, where he called the “irrational” margin system that allowed people to trade with borrowed funds, with customer funds being loaned to “incompetent risk engines.” Frustrated, he saw an opportunity to make a fortune by taking a leadership position in a fast-growing market.

“It was a small industry a few years ago, and all of a sudden it’s become a huge industry, and its players haven’t had to go through the kind of evolutionary pressures that you normally see with an industry that big and that new,” Bankman-Fried said. “It’s looking like, ‘Wow, these are really core entities in crypto, more important than exchanges or traditional finance, but they’re not well constructed.’ ”

In 2017, he founded Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm that manages $100 million in digital assets; FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that conducts $5 billion in transactions per day; and Solana, a blockchain that aims to compete with Ethereum with faster and cheaper transactions. Bankman-Fried's three companies form the basis of a nearly independent financial ecosystem, on which his company is better able to capture the value they create.

Thanks to his work, his net worth is now estimated at $11.5 billion, not counting $23 billion worth of locked cryptocurrencies, making him this year the 10th richest member of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 class, and the richest known cryptocurrency billionaire.

Although his wealth is partially locked up, he has begun laying the groundwork for an ultimate dream that could advance his favorite causes, including disease control and animal rescue. In February, he launched the nonprofit FTX Foundation, which has a mission to donate 1% of FTX’s net fees and has raised $8.9 million in donations, including $6 million from other donors who want to follow Bankman-Fried’s lead.

Fried also donated $5 million to a super PAC supporting U.S. President Biden's successful 2020 presidential campaign. Kman Fried talked about another kind of effectiveness: influencing elections by supporting candidates. He said: "I had a lot of fun watching politics last year, and I did some calculations and thought about what influences politics?" "I think it's been very effective. And we're going to get more of it."

Cryptocurrency is a product of a disruptive era and a global carnival.
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