my guy comes from the "elite", both his parents are stanford professors, i'm sure a smart guy like him can raise money.

Ah yes, the mysterious elite and their impenetrable opaque social circles that spawn wunderkind out of thin air...

Aren't they just referring to the rich elite class that uses nepotism?

Spawn investment money out of thin air

Just good nature and good nurture.

i'm sure SBF is very smart, i just meant more like "How would this guy get access to that kind of capital"

The article mentions it. He started doing the arb with $50k of his own money through a bank account another Effective Altruist in Japan helped him set up, then:

> With SBF’s initial $50,000 compounding at 10 percent each day, the next step was to increase the amount of capital. At the time, the total daily volume of crypto trading was on the order of a billion dollars. Figuring he wanted to capture 5 percent of that, SBF went looking for a $50 million loan. Again, he reached out to the EA community. Jaan Tallinn, the cofounder of Skype, put up a good chunk of that initial $50 million.

Tons of smart people born to elite professors and almost zero percent of them end up billionaires(notionally at least).

Yes, people know him. He's a math-y guy (and seemed like a reasonably nice and genuine person). He wasn't just a Jane Street intern, he worked there for a few years full time before striking out on his own. Doesn't seem so hard to explain to me--smart dude with some experience in finance et viola.

Was he particularly successful at Jane street? As an example of someone with a solidified track record, Bezos was at DE Shaw for only 4 years as well and he is to this day still the youngest senior VP(28 years old) ever after only 2 years there.

The traders at my firm knew him for Alameda. Straight quote: "It's crazy to think a couple of years ago we were just chatting with this dude and he seemed like a normal guy and now he's got billions of dollars. Guy timed it hella right."

AFAIK he seemed a decent fellow (but that's 2nd hand) and about par for the trading space. But that was then. Obviously now in hindsight, he seems to have been different in some intangible ways.