In just three years since its founding, FTX has become one of the hottest brands in the crypto landscape, enabling its users to exchange cryptocurrency on its platform.
As of last July, the company enabled over $10 billion in trading volume daily and boasted over 1 million users. FTX is the brainchild of Sam Bankman-Fried, a growing breed of effective altruists—a group of people who believe money should be donated to projects that have been shown to have the most impact in bettering the world.
Bankman-Fried, 30, is one of the faces of crypto. The Miami Heat arena bears the FTX name. With the company’s success and growth in just three years, Bankman-Fried now wants to go beyond crypto and grow FTX into a diversified trading platform.
“FTX is a profitable company,” Bankman-Fried told Bloomberg News recently. “You can look at the amount that we’ve raised over the last year or two — it’s a few billion dollars. That gives maybe a sense of where we are in terms of cash that was explicitly viewed from a potential acquisition angle.”
In the last few months, FTX has acquired stakes in IEX Group and LedgerX as part of an acquisition spree. Despite the urge to diversify, Bankman-Fried is an evangelist for crypto and believes the technology could help democratize finance and reduce poverty.
Sam Bankman-Fried will join the HBS Club of NY for a wide-ranging conversation about crypto, its future and where Bankman-Fried sees opportunities and philanthropy. Join us for this exciting conversation with one of the rising stars in technology.
HBS Club of New York invites HBS Club of Chicago.
SPEAKER
Sam Bankman-Fried
CEO / FTX
Sam Bankman-Fried is an MIT graduate with a degree in physics who started his career in financial markets with Jane Street. He traded a variety of ETFs, futures, currencies, and equities, and designed their automated OTC trading system. After Jane Street, he founded the quantitative trading firm Alameda Research. During his time at Alameda, he and his colleagues noticed that the technology from cryptocurrency exchanges for institutional investors could be better. As a result, he created FTX in 2019, which is now the largest crypto trading exchange outside China. Beginning during his time at MIT and continuing throughout his professional career, Sam has been a believer in effective altruism in which he has dedicated his time to maximizing his earnings to affect as much positive change in the world as possible. Over the past decade, Sam has donated to initiatives that focus on animal rights, climate change and more.
MODERATOR
Mitchell Dong (AB ’75, OPM ‘97)
Private Investor. Entrepreneur. Cryptocurrency Trader. Savvy Investor
Mitchell Dong runs his family’s investment office and is a hedge fund manager. He has managed hedge funds which use quantitative methods to trade uranium, electric power, gold and mutual funds. Currently he runs a cryptocurrency trading fund which does arbitrage and trend following. In the past, Mitchell was a developer of solar, hydroelectric and cogeneration power plants. Mitchell is a graduate of Harvard College majoring in economics and the OPM program at Harvard Business School. Mitchell’s family philanthropy supports the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
EVENT DETAILS:
Date: Thursday, June 30, 2022
Time: 5:00 to 6:00 PM CENTRAL
Host: HBS Club of New York
Virtual: Zoom
COST:
HBSCC Patron Members: Complimentary
HBSCC Regular Members: $10
Non-Members & General Public: $25
Please note that no refunds will be issued.
Registration Closes on Wednesday, June 29, 2022.
Upon registration, webinar zoom instructions will be emailed to the attendee list on the morning of Thursday, June 30.
Membership: Save on Events like these and Join the Club!