Sam Bankman-Fried (born March 6, 1992), commonly known as SBF, is an American former cryptocurrency entrepreneur and convicted felon. He founded the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in 2019 and the quantitative trading firm Alameda Research in 2017. At his peak in 2022, Forbes estimated his net worth at approximately $26 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people under 30 in history. He was a prominent figure in the effective altruism movement and one of the largest political donors in the 2022 U.S. election cycle.

In November 2022, FTX collapsed after revelations that billions of dollars in customer funds had been secretly transferred to Alameda Research to cover trading losses and fund personal ventures. Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on December 12, 2022, and extradited to the United States. He was charged with seven counts of fraud and conspiracy by the U.S. Department of Justice. After a month-long trial in the Southern District of New York, a jury convicted him on all counts on November 2, 2023. On March 28, 2024, Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced him to 25 years in federal prison. He is currently incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, pending transfer to a federal prison facility.

Bankman-Fried grew up in a privileged academic household on the campus of Stanford University, where both his parents are law professors. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating in 2014 with a degree in physics and a minor in mathematics. Before entering cryptocurrency, he worked as a trader at Jane Street Capital. He was known for his disheveled appearance, frequently wearing cargo shorts and T-shirts to meetings with investors and politicians, and for playing the video game League of Legends during meetings.