JAKARTA - Names such as Jeff Bezoz, the founder of Amazon, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, or the owner of the Louis Vuitton brand, are some of the richest people in the world who are always at the top of the Forbes Magazine list. But among the Forbes list, tucked the name of a young man whose age is not even 30 years old but already has abundant wealth.
In the list of billionaires released by Forbes in 2021, there is the name Sam Bankman-Fried. A 29-year-old young man who is in the position of 274 richest people in the world in 2021. This young man from the United States has a net worth of 26.5 billion US dollars or almost IDR 381 trillion through trading crypto assets.
Bankman-Fried, who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a degree in Physics, is the son of a Stanford University professor, but prefers to study as an Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) trader at the Quant Firm. Previously Sam had worked on Wall Street. Since 2019 he founded his own ETF company under the name FTX and serves as CEO of FTX.
FTX is a crypto exchange platform. The company has experienced rapid growth in the last two years. FTX allows traders to buy and sell digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Then he founded the crypto trading company Alameda Research. In a short time he made a lot of money, taking advantage of price differences in global markets. Currently, Alameda Research has managed assets worth 2.5 billion US dollars.
Aspirations Since ChildhoodSince childhood, Bankman-Fried has had a dream to become a very rich human being. However, his goal of becoming rich was to do charity.
"I want to be rich not because I like money, but because I want to give that money to charity," said Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried believes in the concept of getting to deliver. That is, Bankman-Fried's goal as a human being is to make as much money as possible and only to give it to others as charity. His mission to become rich was immediately realized after graduating from MIT.
Bankman-Fried sees that the price of Bitcoin in the United States is different from the price of Bitcoin in Japan. According to him, it is an opportunity to become rich.
"So Bitcoin costs 10 thousand US dollars on the US exchange, but 11 thousand US dollars on the Japanese exchange. You take 10 million US dollars and you buy at 10 thousand US dollars, then you sell at 11 thousand US dollars. You get 1 million US dollars and we can do it every working day," he said.
From this idea, Bankman-Fried managed to raise 20 million US dollars to start a crypto trading company called FTX. And became one of the largest companies in the world with a value of more than 40 billion US dollars. Bankman-Fried's key to becoming the richest man in the world was the FTX exchange which he co-founded with Gary Wang. Wang is a fellow MIT graduate and a former Google software engineer. The crypto-based company is now one of the largest cryptocurrency trading venues in the world.
The Bahamas-based exchange has raised $32 billion in assets from well-known investment firms such as SoftBank, Tiger Global and Temasek. The spin off is worth 8 billion US dollars (Rp. 114 trillion).
The FTX exchange is now more valuable than Twitter, stock exchange giant Nasdaq, and Germany's Deutsche Bank.
In 2018, he realized that the existing crypto exchange was not very good, as it was problematic, insecure, and had almost no customer support. Even though I had doubts that I would not get customers, gradually the customers came. People started talking about the new exchange on social media, and telling their friends.
Daily Volume Reaches IDR 859 TrillionCustomers who initially only a few have now come in droves. By 2021, FTX had 5 million users by the end of the year. Daily volume hit a record 60 billion US dollars (Rp 859 trillion) in May.
“An important part of the success of FTX is that crashes are very rare,” says Bankman-Fried.
In addition, traders are interested in its policy of allowing them to have one account where margin balances offset each other, rather than multiple margin accounts. Margin means borrowing money from a broker to trade.
And they love the complex crypto derivatives that FTX specializes in. Those conditions allow them to bet on the future prices of major tokens, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
However, as a hub for risky trading activity, the FTX is firmly in the eyes of regulators and lawmakers. From four employees at the time of its establishment, now FTX employs about 250 people.
"We don't need capital, we profit. We will do whatever feels right for the company," Bankman-Fried said in a Nasdaily vlog.
Activities as PhilanthropyIn accordance with his mission to become very rich to help others, Bankman-Fried, who is not yet 30 years old, has donated his wealth of 50 million US dollars (Rp.712 billion). He plans to donate even more assets, amounting to 500 million US dollars (Rp 7.1 trillion) a year. It didn't stop there, Bankman-Fried also targeted that in the next 10 years, he might give more than 10 billion US dollars (Rp. 142 trillion).
Even though he was already rich, Bankman-Fried did not use his money for personal gain. He lives a simple life, even this man who lives in the Bahamas shares his room with 10 other roommates.
Bankman-Fried is an inspiring role model especially for young people. He pays attention to many things, including global warming, the COVID-19 pandemic, tropical diseases, animal welfare, and many other things about humanity.
"The amount of kindness you can do for the future of the world is truly enormous, and it's more than enough to make yourself happy with that amount of money," said Sam Bankman-Fried, one of the world's richest people according to Forbes' latest version.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
