# Ever heard of this 30 year old billionaire?



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Sam Bankman-Fried was born in 1992 and has a net worth of approximately $8 billion.

He seems to have made his money by doing some international arbitrage in crypto. Basically he found an inefficiency (in the young market) and exploited it aggressively. Nice!

Arbitrage opportunities are pretty rare in mature stock markets, because so many experts are participating. Crypto was the wild west, and had opportunities for advanced traders like him.

He had $24 billion at the end of last year, but is currently down to about $8 billion.


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## MrBlackhill (Jun 10, 2020)

I hope this is true:

_Bankman-Fried is a supporter of effective altruism and pursues earning to give as an altruistic career. He is a member of Giving What We Can and has claimed that he plans to donate the great majority of his wealth to effective charities over the course of his life. His company FTX has a policy of donating 1% of its revenue to charity._


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

MrBlackhill said:


> _Bankman-Fried is a supporter of effective altruism and pursues earning to give as an altruistic career. He is a member of Giving What We Can and has claimed that he plans to donate the great majority of his wealth to effective charities over the course of his life. His company FTX has a policy of donating 1% of its revenue to charity._


He made the second-largest donation to Joe Biden's campaign

He's bailing out companies that became insolvent from 3 arrows capital poor risk management. He seems to know crypto has a rocky political future and isn't in the clear yet

But it's looking like he will be this generation's Rothschild. Hopefully more altruistic though


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

^ What goes up quickly comes down quickly. Just a matter of time.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

His "net worth" is based on the market cap of the crypto tokens he owns, which is a sketchy way to calculate net worth.


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## Mortgage u/w (Feb 6, 2014)

For someone to win, someone else must lose.


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

sags said:


> His "net worth" is based on the market cap of the crypto tokens he owns, which is a sketchy way to calculate net worth.


 ... I didn't bother checking but what you stated make sense. I wonder if he can use his cryptos to buy a super-yacht like Musk (in the news again, can't keep his zipper (in the pelvic region) closed).


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Yup......poor Tesla shareholders are getting whacked. The board is going to have to give Musk the boot one of these days.


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## peterk (May 16, 2010)

So he didn't start a business that makes useful products, or provides any valuable service, but he did skim billions of dollars off of 10 million+ naive young people, who will now have an incrementally harder life because of the money they don't have but could've... But it's OK because he'll commit some to philanthropy (1% so far it seems - lol) starting with donations to rich and powerful politicians...

What a hero and role model.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Beaver101 said:


> ... I didn't bother checking but what you stated make sense. I wonder if he can use his cryptos to buy a super-yacht like Musk (in the news again, can't keep his zipper (in the pelvic region) closed).


Musk was just renting the yacht.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

peterk said:


> So he didn't start a business that makes useful products, or provides any valuable service, but he did skim billions of dollars off of 10 million+ naive young people, who will now have an incrementally harder life because of the money they don't have but could've... But it's OK because he'll commit some to philanthropy (1% so far it seems - lol) starting with donations to rich and powerful politicians...
> 
> What a hero and role model.


He started FTX and Alameda Research. FTX owns the Miami arena now

I actually know many 20 somethings from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines etc who are changing their lives thanks to crypto. The guy from Sri Lanka just got accepted to a UK school thanks to funds he made himself in crypto meanwhile Sri Lanka is in a economic crisis from printing fiat and considers all crypto illegal.

If you just read mainstream FUD you won't understand


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

peterk said:


> So he didn't start a business that makes useful products, or provides any valuable service, but he did skim billions of dollars off of 10 million+ naive young people, who will now have an incrementally harder life because of the money they don't have but could've... But it's OK because he'll commit some to philanthropy (1% so far it seems - lol) starting with donations to rich and powerful politicians...
> 
> What a hero and role model.


Do you realize how much the banks skim off people to move/exchange money? Do you realize how much Visa/MC makes off merchant fees on every single credit card transaction?

Do you realize the banks are the biggest business in Canada? Do you think they don't provide a useful service? What about Western Union charging exorbitant fees for foreign workers to send remittances home to families? Traditional banking is ok because you get free airline miles or rewards points you may or may not use and may or may not retain their value, right? Increasing debt to GDP is ok because we can just print more fiat and the kids will pay it off, right?

The reality of this system is that we need more immigrants and new wage slaves to prop up the bottom of the pyramid scheme. That's why it doesn't work for Sri Lanka anymore


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

m3s said:


> I actually know many 20 somethings from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines etc who are changing their lives thanks to crypto. The guy from Sri Lanka just got accepted to a UK school thanks to funds he made himself in crypto meanwhile Sri Lanka is in a economic crisis from printing fiat and considers all crypto illegal.


You know about these because you hang out in the crypto community. I'm glad these people made a lot of money, but there's nothing that unique about speculating and trading. When there's a bull market in a security, many traders are going to make a lot of money. Of course when it's a bear market, many will lose.

Buddy, its gambling.

If you were a Gen-X'er who was into penny stocks, and hanging out in trader and penny stock forum, you would know many people who changed their lives thanks to penny stocks or NASDAQ stocks. For example my coworker has a relative who made a million bucks off one of these crooked Vancouver-based mining companies many years ago.

One of my friends, a retired guy, bought a lot of AMZN stock many years ago (closer to 2000). He's made a killing off it. Definitely a "life changing" profit which has positively impacted his retirement. < again this was gambling >

These days, penny stocks and pink sheets aren't in fashion. Large cap NASDAQ stocks are in fashion, and crypto is in fashion.

Don't get too emotionally attached @m3s as I think you are buying "the story" too much and it's going to cloud your judgement. If you want to make money as a speculator you have to adapt to the latest bull markets and be unemotional. Crypto is just a trading security. The next big trading market is going to be something completely different, perhaps it's already happening in energy stocks today... or could be in Vietnamese shares. Who knows!


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

james4beach said:


> You know about these because you hang out in the crypto community. I'm glad these people made a lot of money, but there's nothing that unique about speculating and trading. When there's a bull market in a security, many traders are going to make a lot of money. Of course when it's a bear market, many will lose.
> 
> Buddy, its gambling.
> 
> ...


There are 2 separate things happening that most people don't seem to understand

I have said before people make and lose money in all markets. People who buy stocks or RE without proper research lose money to those who put in the effort to understand the market. I even posted in here that I was selling since September last year. I was selling long before the top and long before any crash. So if you think it clouds my judgement I disagree. I'm not the one who bought the top in 2017

What you fail to differentiate is that there is something separate from the price. The dot com bubble didn't mean the internet was useless. It just meant the speculators all piled in and created a bubble. You bought the top of the 2017 hype and then dismissed it because it crashed. You think your friend is gambling on amazon but he bought long before the hype. Not everyone can understand the difference and timing required.

There definitely are people who can make money in markets they understand. This is very different from people who gamble on hype. The prices are very different thing from the underlying. You have to buy and sell in any market but you don't need to time the market perfectly. Someone like sags who calls a crash for 10 years for something that is up 1000x over that period would never get this aspect.

There are many people who sold even though they "bought the story". There was lots of time to sell and I posted many bearish threads here.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

james4beach said:


> One of my friends, a retired guy, bought a lot of AMZN stock many years ago (closer to 2000). He's made a killing off it. Definitely a "life changing" profit which has positively impacted his retirement. < again this was gambling >


I assume your friend bought AMZN sometime after the crash in 2000. If he bought the peak it took nearly a decade to reach that price again

I slowly bought some crypto after the 2018 crash. Who knows if your friend yolo'd his life saving into AMZN or he simple saw the opportunity to buy some after the crash as I did. Did he paper hand it all at once or average out? Probably still holds some and just borrows against it

Someone who bought the crypto hype in 2017 like you only had to wait less than 3 years for it to come back and it is still above the 2017 peak. Now if you averaged in to a small allocation during the bear market you'd be up far more especially if you averaged out during the 2021 mania instead of buying hype.

You don't have to time the market and there's no need for leverage. I averaged in when it seems low and average out when it seems high. These cycles take years and there's lots of time. AMZN is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.

Again there are 2 very distinct things between price and underlying and timing is pretty important.


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## Gothenburg83 (Dec 30, 2021)

james4beach said:


> Sam Bankman-Fried was born in 1992 and has a net worth of approximately $8 billion.
> 
> He seems to have made his money by doing some international arbitrage in crypto. Basically he found an inefficiency (in the young market) and exploited it aggressively. Nice!
> 
> ...











Sam Harris | #271 - Earning to Give


In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Sam Bankman-Fried about effective altruism.




www.samharris.org


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

andrewf said:


> Musk was just renting the yacht.


 ...world's richest man doesn't even "own" his own yacht? I'm shocked.


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## MrBlackhill (Jun 10, 2020)

It's pretty sad to see how the world's richest man is unhealthy. He is overweight and white like snow. He should take care of his health if he wants to still be able to bring value* to this world for many more years.

*value is subjective


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

MrBlackhill said:


> It's pretty sad to see how the world's richest man is unhealthy. He is overweight and white like snow.


 ... not sad, but pathetic given his financial status. My goly, that pic of him on the yacht looked GROSS. Better for him to keep the shirt on instead I say.


> He should take care of his health if he wants to still be able to bring value* to this world for many more years.
> 
> *value is subjective


 ... he got 9 kids with more to come so there's value. He stated he wants to increase the world's population ... with his droppings of course.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

_About *80% of freshly minted cryptocurrencies are underwater* and their average returns are close to zero relative to Bitcoin within a year, according to a Jump Crypto analysis. 

While there are a few high-profile outliers, the majority of new coins were underperforming within the first month, the public-facing crypto brand for Jump Trading Group found, after analyzing 3,759 tokens -- excluding assets like stablecoins -- that were listed on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap between the middle of 2013 and the end of last year. Jump measured returns from the token’s inception through the end of 2021. 

The review does appear to have somewhat of a silver lining, however: It doesn’t matter if a token was purchased in a bull of bear market, or if it performed well prior to a purchase -- a sign of an efficient market, Jump found.

“The market for new tokens looks surprisingly efficient, in that *returns are neither systematic nor predictable*,” Jump said in the report._









Most New Crypto Is Underwater Relative to Bitcoin Within a Year - BNN Bloomberg


About 80% of freshly minted cryptocurrencies are underwater and their average returns are close to zero relative to Bitcoin within a year, according to a Jump Crypto analysis.




www.bnnbloomberg.ca


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## HappilyRetired (Nov 14, 2021)

MrBlackhill said:


> It's pretty sad to see how the world's richest man is unhealthy. He is overweight and white like snow. He should take care of his health if he wants to still be able to bring value* to this world for many more years.
> 
> *value is subjective


If you think Musk is unhealthy, just wait until you hear about the US president...


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## MrBlackhill (Jun 10, 2020)

HappilyRetired said:


> If you think Musk is unhealthy, just wait until you hear about the US president...


Difference is the US president is 30 years older.


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## HappilyRetired (Nov 14, 2021)

MrBlackhill said:


> Difference is the US president is 30 years older.


Of course he's older, but he's near death and people are pretending that he's perfectly healthy. An unhealthy billionaire isn't a big deal to anyone except them and their family, but a US president that can't function is a very big deal.


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

^ Like the Dump is getting younger and fit for re-election in 2024. No big deal.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

sags said:


> _About *80% of freshly minted cryptocurrencies are underwater* and their average returns are close to zero relative to Bitcoin within a year, according to a Jump Crypto analysis. _


Of course

This is like comparing random air miles, canadian tire money and saggy old man coin that were created out of thin air to something that actually has developers and adoption. In crypto really only the top 1-5% matter

This is no different than anything else. The top 20% of stocks is what you want. Never touch the crap bottom feeders that need government to stay alive like GM


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Some posts here didn’t age well.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

sags said:


> Some posts here didn’t age well.


So how many goals can a fat Wayne Gretzky score from constantly criticizing players from the stands?

Why does a fat Wayne Gretzky who only criticizes players he paid $300 to watch go home to a 70s slum in a Korean SUV when all the real players go home to mansions?

What is fat Wayne Gretzky's point? That he is a moron and wants to pretend he isn't for a few minutes?


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## HappilyRetired (Nov 14, 2021)

sags said:


> Some posts here didn’t age well.


You should feel right at home


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