Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been arrested in the Bahamas at the request of the US government. He faces charges including wire fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations. Once known as the “King of Crypto,” Bankman-Fried’s downfall marks a sharp turn from his rise to multibillionaire status in just five years. In interviews prior to his arrest, a persistent clicking noise was heard on his videos, possibly coming from his mouse, while his eyes darted around the screen, indicating his attention was divided.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former boss of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is an avid gamer who plays League of Legends to unwind from running two multi-billion dollar trading companies. He even played the team fantasy battle game during a high-level video call with the investment team of Sequoia Capital, according to a blog post from the venture capital giant. Mr. Bankman-Fried also acquired the video game maker of Storybook Brawl, a game he enjoyed playing, in March 2022. Despite this, the investment firm went on to invest $210m in Mr Bankman-Fried’s company, FTX. FTX’s collapse has left many of its estimated 1.2 million registered users wondering if they will ever get back their savings. Mr Bankman-Fried went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was swept up in the effective altruism movement.

Learning to trade stocks at Jane Street in New York, Sam Bankman-Fried decided to experiment with Bitcoin and started arbitraging after noticing the variations in its value across different exchanges. After making modest profits for a month, he founded a trading business called Alameda Research with some college friends. It took months of perfecting techniques on moving money in and out of banks and across borders, but after three months, he hit the jackpot. He and his team were super-determined, creative, and built new systems to get through obstacles.

Mr Bankman-Fried’s journey from trading Bitcoin in college to becoming a billionaire is a tale of risks, rewards, and beanbags. After learning to trade stocks, he experimented with Bitcoin and started arbitraging. He founded a trading business called Alameda Research, which grew exponentially and made $1m every day by January 2018. He then founded FTX, a crypto exchange that grew to be the second largest in the world, valued at $32bn in early 2022. Despite his success, he continued to delight his Twitter followers by posting about his lifestyle, mainly sleeping on a beanbag next to his desk. Mr Bankman-Fried also had a dream of giving away vast amounts of money to charity and claimed to have given away “a few hundred million as of now.”

Despite his hopes of making amends for the FTX collapse, Sam Bankman-Fried, the former boss of the embattled cryptocurrency exchange, was arrested in December 2022 on charges of defrauding customers and investors. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to claims that he used customer deposits at FTX to fund his other firm, Alameda Research, purchase property, and make political donations. The collapse of FTX and the arrest of Bankman-Fried, along with other scandals and hacks in the cryptocurrency industry, has caused significant losses in value, trust, and excitement, with experts warning of even worse days to come. Bankman-Fried’s rise to the top of the cryptocurrency world was a dramatic story of risks and rewards, with his Bitcoin arbitrage trading business eventually leading to the creation of FTX, which became the second largest crypto exchange in the world. Despite his philanthropic goals, Bankman-Fried’s downfall came after accusations about the financial stability of FTX, which resulted in a run on the exchange and its eventual bankruptcy.