Hong Kong’s 29-year-old crypto billionaire: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried

Abstract

In 2021, one of Hong Kong’s richest people — indeed, the world’s richest person under the age of 30 — is not an old-money heir but a US native who built his fortune in the cutting-edge world of cryptocurrency. Sam Bankman-Fried is worth $8.7bn, according to Forbes. But that number could get “a lot bigger” depending on the outcome of a fundraising round that he says will sharply increase the valuation of FTX, the Hong-Kong based crypto derivative exchange he founded in 2019.