Sam Bankman-Fried Pledges $1 Billion to Crypto Market and More Breaking News Here

Self-proclaimed crypto savior

30-Year-Old Backs Crypto Market With 1 Billion

Investor confidence in cryptocurrencies has been hit hard. Since the beginning of the year, several crypto companies have gone bankrupt. A 30-year-old American entrepreneur is on a mission to save the industry.

Many investors have gotten their hands badly burned in the crypto market. The old digital gold has seen a historic drop on the stock market this year. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, has lost half its value since the start of the year.

Several crypto companies have gone bankrupt. Investor confidence has been deeply shaken – and now needs to be rebuilt. At least that’s the plan of Sam Bankman-Fried (30), a young American entrepreneur. The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX Trading has proclaimed himself the savior of the industry. Bankman-Fried’s moves are being closely watched by crypto investors, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The rescue does not succeed in all cases

Sam Bankman-Fried bailed out struggling digital currency lender BlockFi earlier this year. Just for that, he raised a loan of 400 million dollars!

Bankman-Fried was less successful with its attempt to rescue Voyager Digital, also a crypto bank. He increased his stake in the company and loaned it $75 million, only to see the money evaporate two weeks later. Voyager Digital has gone bankrupt.

“We are doing what we can to contain the contagion,” Sam Bankman-Fried told The Wall Street Journal. “Sometimes that means we try to help where that’s not enough.”

The billionaire also bought crypto exchanges in Canada and Japan and ran ads in popular magazines in an effort to re-engage crypto with the mainstream.

Bitcoin Specialist: “That’s why you should stay calm now”(06:45)

He wants to reinvent the stock market

Overall, Bankman-Fried has committed $1 billion to bailing out crypto firms so far this year. And with success, if we are to believe the balance sheet of the entrepreneur: The worst is over, he says, in the face of the wave of bankruptcies in the industry. “Of course, anything can happen, but as far as I know, we’ve seen that most of the contagion has already been flushed out of the system,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

The entrepreneur finances his shopping spree with the enormous reserves of his company FTX Trading. It made the group the third largest crypto exchange in the world. The company has billions in reserves and reportedly made $388 million in profits on sales of $1 billion last year.

Sam Bankman-Fried has big plans for the future: he wants to use the technology behind Bitcoin to reinvent the traditional world of finance, stock exchange and everyday payment transactions. These are ambitious goals: even more than ten years after the birth of bitcoin, many people are still struggling with digital currencies – even more so after the crypto crash this year. (smt)