The CEO of crypto giant FTX lost the majority of his $16 billion fortune in a single day as his company came to the brink of collapse, CNN reports.
Sam Bankman-Fried's personal fortune dropped by 94% in 24 hours, marking the biggest one-day loss by a billionaire ever.
The loss comes just a year after the 30-year-old claimed his company would soon be big enough to buy investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.
Instead, FTX has had to rely on a bailout from rival Changpeng Zhao's Binance after their token plummeted by over 75% in the space of 24 hours. It is now worth just $5.
Bankman-Fried's fall from grace comes after he spent years at the top of the crypto market. His personal wealth peaked at $26 billion earlier this year.
However, things started going downhill for the young billionaire over the summer, when his fortune declined by 66%. According to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index, he had a 53% stake in FTX worth around $6.2 billion, but the bulk of his wealth was invested in his crypto trading company, Alameda Research.
Remember when Akon announced the launch of his own cryptocurrency, Akoin?Last Friday, things took a turn for the worse when it was revealed that a token issued by FTX - FTT - accounted for over $25 of Alameda Research's assets.
Not long after, Bankman-Fried's rival Zhao announced that his company would be liquidating its holdings of FTT. The news sent FTT's value crashing down, with the token plummeting by 80%.
Amid the collapse, Zhao took to Twitter to gloat over his rival's downfall, and remind him that he should never have used his own company's cryptocurrency as collateral.
"Two big lessons: 1. Never use a token you created as collateral. 2. Don't borrow if you run a crypto business. Don't use capital 'efficiently'. Have a large reserve," he wrote.
Bankman-Fried, meanwhile, reassured customers that they would be "protected" amid Zhao's takeover of his company in a lengthy Twitter thread.
"It may take a bit to settle etc. - we apologize for that," he wrote, "But the important thing is that customers are protected."
"I know that there have been rumors in media of conflict between our two exchanges, however Binance has shown time and again that they are committed to a more decentralized global economy while working to improve industry relations with regulators. We are in the best of hands," Bankman-Fried added.
Zhao - who is already the richest man in the crypto market - will likely see his personal wealth increase as he assimilates FTX into his empire.
