He's 30, Worth $24B, Drives a Corolla, Sleeps in a Beanbag

Sam Bankman-Fried wants FTX, the Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange he co-founded, to become the "biggest source of financial transactions in the world." In the meantime, he has a plan for the fortune he's already raking in: He wants to give most of it away. The 30-year-old tech entrepreneur, dubbed the "Robin Hood of crypto" by the Sydney Morning Herald, recently spoke with Zeke Faux at Bloomberg about his plans to keep about $100,000 annually—1% of his earnings—and donate the rest. "You pretty quickly run out of really effective ways to make yourself happier by spending money," Bankman-Fried tells the outlet. "I don't want a yacht." USA Today notes that FTX was valued by investors at $18 billion last year, while Bankman-Fried himself has a net worth of about $24 billion, according to stats from Forbes, which has previously reported on his generosity plan.

Per Faux, Bankman-Fried "lives like a college student perpetually cramming for finals," puttering around in a Toyota Corolla, holing up in a luxury apartment in Nassau with nearly a dozen roommates, and sleeping on a beanbag. He's already started opening up his wallet, donating $50 million last year to various causes, including climate programs and aid to India to deal with the pandemic. But Bankman-Fried's "earning to give" philosophy—in which one exploits a Wall Street-driven system to rack up as much money as possible, then donates much of it—is controversial in itself, as that system props the super-rich up as saviors without addressing poverty's underlying causes, and "perpetuates inequality and undermines whatever good might be done by donations," Faux writes.

For instance, the $50 million Bankman-Fried donated in 2020 pales in comparison to what he's spent lately on various other ventures, including a $30 million Super Bowl ad starring Larry David, as well as naming rights for the Miami Heat's arena, with a price tag of $135 million over 19 years. He's also made lots of political contributions to both sides of the aisle, including more than $5 million in 2020 to a super PAC supporting Joe Biden. "As by far the richest person to emerge from the effective-altruism movement, Bankman-Fried is a thought experiment from a college philosophy seminar come to life," Faux notes of the "capitalist monk," before posing the question: "Should someone who wants to save the world first amass as much money and power as possible, or will the pursuit corrupt him along the way?" Much more here.