A 29-year-old CEO is Pushing Crypto During the Super Bowl by Giving Away Millions in Bitcoin
Americans tuning in to the Super Bowl on Sunday will be inundated with ads from cryptocurrency companies, including the trading platform FTX, which plans to give away millions of dollars in bitcoin. From a report: FTX has spent heavily on sports partnerships to try to make itself a brand name in crypto, including an ad with NFL star Tom Brady, a sponsorship with Major League Baseball and a $135 million deal to rename the Miami Heat's stadium the FTX Arena. Co-founder and chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who recently moved FTX's headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas, says the ads are as much about courting U.S. regulators as getting customers to download its trading app. "We want to make sure that we're painting, hopefully, a healthy image of ourselves and the industry," said Bankman-Fried, 29, who has a net worth of more than $24 billion, according to Forbes. "We're optimistic that we're going to be able to grow our U.S. business -- a lot of that is working with U.S. regulators on bringing new products to market." The crypto industry includes virtual currencies such as bitcoin and Ether, as well as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, that can provide proof of ownership for assets such as digital images or weapons within video games. Both cryptocurrencies and NFTs are built using an information-storing technology called blockchain.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.