I am surprised that more has not been written in Irish about Sam Bankman-Fried, who is known as SBF for short, and who is one of the worst fraudsters ever! As that is a significant oversight, here is my attempt to correct that problem!

Who is SBF?

Sam Bankman-Fried was born in California in the United States to two Stanford Law School professors in 1992. After attending secondary school in California, he graduated in physics and mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014.

He started his career in 2013 as an intern at Jane Street Capital – a trading firm with expertise in exchange traded funds – where he got his first work experience. He went to work full-time with the same company after graduating. In November 2017, he co-founded the quantitative trading firm Alameda Research with Tara Mac Aulay of the Center for Effective Altruism, where he briefly worked as director of development. Effective altruism, founded by two philosophers at the University of Oxford in 2009, is a philosophy in which people earn as much money as they can, so that they can donate more money to charity. That philosophy had a great influence on SBF, especially after he met their co-founder, William MacAskill. MacAskill is said to have convinced the brilliant mathematician SBF to maximize his influence by taking a high-paying job and giving away a large portion of it. It was because of this that SBF chose a permanent position with Jane Street Capital on Wall Street. He donated half his salary to charity while he was there.

Sa bhliain 2019, bhunaigh SBF an malartú cryptea-airgeadra darb ainm FTX.  Bhog Bankman-Fried ceanncheathrú a dhá chomhlacht go dtí na Bahámaí ag deireadh 2021 agus bhog sé é féin agus roinnt dá bhaill fhoirne isteach in árasán dín a cheannaigh sé ar $35 milliún. Faoin am seo, bhí SBF ar cheann de na daoine ba shaibhre ar domhan, agus an ceann ba shaibhre níb óige ná tríocha agus glanfhiúchas $26.5 billiún aige! Bhí luacháil FTX timpeall $40 billiún ag an am.  

Sins of SBF!!

In 2019, SBF founded the cryptocurrency exchange called FTX. Bankman-Fried moved the headquarters of his two companies to the Bahamas at the end of 2021 and moved himself and some of his staff into a penthouse he bought for $35 million. By this time, SBF was one of the richest people in the world, and the richest under thirty with a net worth of $26.5 billion! FTX was valued at around $40 billion at the time.

No other customer was allowed to maintain a negative balance. That negative balance meant that Alameda would be able to borrow FTX customers' money, without the knowledge of those same customers.

SBF and FTX also gave Alameda another advantage. FTX fulfilled any trade submitted by Alameda faster than other customers. That gave Alameda a big advantage, because in that business, time is money!

SBF also received personal loan money from Alameda – about $1 billion! And he borrowed $2.3 billion for his company 'Paper Bird'! FTX employees Nishad Singh ($542 million) and Ryan Salame ($55 million) also borrowed money from Alameda.

Also, SBF and FTX created their own cryptocurrency, named FTT. They kept most of it as collateral in FTX and when Alameda borrowed from FTX, often FTT tokens were used. Because FTX and Alameda had the majority of FTT tokens, FTT did not have a real exchange rate, as neither FTX nor Alameda would be able to sell many FTT tokens, without reducing the same rate. Therefore, FTT's token holdings were not realistic collateral, especially if they had to sell those holdings!

Catastrophic failure!

In November, 2022, the site 'Coindesk' published a report claiming that Alameda was heavily dependent on FTT. Therefore, the company Binance, which competed with FTX, and had a fair amount of FTT tokens, said that they were going to sell them all. That started the panic sale of FTT, and its value fell badly. FTX was short of money, and Alameda was unable to repay what they had borrowed from them. FTX was missing $8 billion and had to declare bankruptcy.

SBF was arrested in the Bahamas and extradited to the United States. He was accused of seven criminal charges, including electronic fraud and money laundering. He was found guilty of all charges. Other FTX and Alameda employees were also arrested, including Caroline Ellison. Those employees testified against SBF, so that they would receive leniency in their own cases.

Conclusion!

This is a foreboding story, no doubt. SBF may have started out full of good intentions, trying to practice 'effective altruism' to help others. But before long, all that was visible was his selfish predation. And finally, as always happens, the whole thing fell apart. SBF will be back in court next March, when he could be sentenced to up to a hundred years in prison.

A little verse to conclude:

The decline of the SBF empire

The world laid low and the wind blew like a dust,

Bankman-Fried, Ellison, and their co-conspirators;

FTX is grass; and look at how it stands with Alameda,

SBF will wake up in a prison cell every day.

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