For many people, League of Legends is one of the hardest video games to learn and master since it features over 150 champions, countless items, and mechanics that need to be constantly monitored throughout a match.
It would probably be hard to hold a conversation with someone while playing the game, let alone while talking to business partners about a multi-million dollar deal. But for FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, that was as easy as a teamfight on Summoner’s Rift.
As reported by Kotaku’s Ethan Gach, the cryptocurrency exchange founder was apparently playing League during an important Zoom call with potential investors from Sequoia, a major venture capital firm. While Bankman-Fried convinced Sequoia’s investors to pool $200 million into his company, he was also getting ganked in his solo queue game.
FTX’s head of product Ramnik Arora said that he walked over after Bankman-Fried pitched his vision of the company to the investors and was impressed with the CEO’s message before realizing that he was playing a game of League the whole time.
During that meeting, Bankman-Fried visualized a future “where you can do anything you want with your next dollar” within the FTX app, whether that was buying crypto, sending money to a friend overseas, or purchasing some food. It was an intriguing premise that could potentially hit almost every single market in the world, and the CEO did it while grabbing some LP in the progress.
As of late, the future of FTX has looked anything but promising, with its stability in question following the rising fear of an upcoming crypto market crash. Bankman-Fried reportedly lost 94 percent of his net worth in one day, and recently, rival company Binance pulled out of its plans to acquire FTX “as a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations.”
