FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who was worth $16 billion earlier this week, saw his fortune slump by 94% to $1 billion on Tuesday, marking the largest wealth collapse for a billionaire in history, According to Bloomberg.
On Tuesday, the 30-year-old CEO announced that his crypto exchange FTX is being sold to rival firm Binance in order to dodge a harsh liquidity crunch. Bankman-Fried’s 53% stake in FTX was worth $6.2 billion, while another $7.4 billion of his fortune came from his crypto trading house, Alameda Research, Bloomberg reported.
With Binance’s acquisition of FTX, Bloomberg’s wealth index now values both FTX and Alameda at $1 each, wiping out the perceived worth of Bankman-Fried’s most significant holdings.
Bankman-Fried isn’t the only one who saw billions wiped off of his net worth. In November 2021, Tesla CEO Elon Musk lost $50 billion in two days when he polled Twitter users if he should sell 10% of his stake in his automaker.
.Bankman-Fried’s losses come in the wake of a devastating $600 billion crypto crash this year. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance — the crypto exchange acquiring FTX — lost $79.4 billion of his fortune this year as a result of the crash, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.