GARY Wang co-founded cryptocurrency exchange FTX with Sam Bankman-Fried and was a multi-billionaire before the age of 30 until his empire imploded in November 2022.
But as the spotlight remains firmly on its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, who curated a public persona by appearing on podcasts and testifying before Congress, who is his co-founder Gary Wang and what’s his net worth?
Who is Gary Wang?
Gary Wang and Sam Bankman-Fried met at a math camp in high school.
Gary Wang then went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he studied mathematics and computer science and was roommates with Bankman-Fried, graduating in 2015.
Wang went on to be a software engineer at Google, where he developed systems to aggregate prices for millions of flights.
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But when Bankman-Fried left the Jane Street Hedge Fund to start quantitative trading firm Alameda Research in 2017, Wang also left the tech giant.
Alameda Research was started in a three-bedroom apartment before the firm moved to Hong Kong.
FTX started by taking advantage of the price discrepancy between BTC in Japan and BTC in the US.
Wang and Bankman-Fried purchased Bitcoin in the US and sold it in Japan, pocketing up to 10 per cent with the differences in prices.
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The pair then used Alameda Research to kickstart liquidity for cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
At its peak, FTX had a valuation of around $32 billion.
It was once seen as the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume.
A source close to FTX said: “Gary was always extremely distant from an employee standpoint, he would most often never be in the office.
“He liked to work from home, he was pretty much the only person that this was okay for.
“Everyone else always had to be in the office but Gary always had the exception.
“Gary always struck me as someone who was like, ‘just tell me what to do and leave me alone’.
“Whenever there was crunch time about ‘Sam’s talking to someone and we got to figure stuff out’ Gary was never around. Gary was just a weapon to be deployed.”
Wang lived in a luxury penthouse in the Bahamas alongside Bankman-Fried, Alameda Caroline Ellison and several others.
What is Gary Wang’s net worth?
At the age of 28, Gary Wang topped Forbes’ April 2022 list of the world’s billionaires under 30 with a net worth of $5.9 billion.
But after FTX collapsed, Wang lost around $1.7 billion.
His net worth now stands at around $4.2 billion.