FaZe Clan Founder Banks Says Ethereum Is 'Large Percentage' of His Net Worth

By Kate Irwin

It’s no secret that prominent gaming influencer FaZe Banks loves crypto. Now, he’s buying more. 

Richard "FaZe Banks" Bengtson is the CEO and co-founder of esports organization and lifestyle brand FaZe Clan. The gamer took to Instagram this week to report his latest crypto purchases and double down on his pro-crypto stance amidst a broader gaming industry where crypto remains a controversial topic.

“Don’t be my typical normie homie and call me asking for plays a year from now when the mainstream media and your mom [are] talking about crypto again,” Banks urged his 2.8 million Instagram followers Tuesday along with a note of Ethereum’s price reaching $2,300, a yearly high.

“Expose yourself now,” Banks continued in a post evangelizing crypto and arguing that potential buyers should look at Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

“BTC is the safest, ETH is about as safe with slightly more upside in my opinion. My personal favorite. A large percentage of my net worth is in Ethereum,” Banks wrote, adding that in his view, Solana is the “riskiest” of the three cryptocurrencies.

“My money is definitely where my mouth is on this one. Buy it and leave it alone. Chill,” he added.

Like many financial assets and purchases, though, it’s important to note that buying or trading cryptocurrencies comes with risk—and fans should be careful not to take financial advice from influencers or celebrities they follow online. It's often not clear what an influencers motivations may be in promoting a cryptocurrency, NFT project, or any financial asset.

Banks also claimed that he recently spent $200,000 on four altcoins: Prime, Pepe, Mog, and Clouds, the last of which has not yet been officially released.

Prime is the sci-fi NFT card game Parallel’s official token, Pepe is a frog-inspired meme coin which recently rose to a $666 million market cap, and Mog is a meme coin that’s been swirling on Twitter among fans who have paired it with memes of people and animals wearing a specific pair of colorfully-tinted glasses. Clouds is an upcoming token from the Endless Clouds crypto startup that is developing the Treeverse gaming platform.

“These are the first real plays I’ve made since the big market crash,” Banks said, who over the summer also hopped onto the “SocialFi” trend and made over $70,000 by signing up for Friend.tech.

Banks did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment on his latest crypto purchases.

It’s worth noting that FaZe Clan’s newly-appointed CEO has been in crypto for years now. Back in 2021, Banks was accused of allegedly pumping and dumping an altcoin he promoted, BankSocial. 

And a quick glimpse at a wallet connected to Banks called “Banksfucks” currently holds some NFTs from Azuki’s collections, two Bored Apes, four Mutant Ape NFTs, a staggering 72 Otherdeed NFTs for Yuga Labs’ Otherside metaverse game, two Clone X NFTs, and one Doodles NFT, among others. He has also recently boasted of CryptoPunks holdings.

While Banks is a crypto and NFT enthusiast, not everyone in FaZe Clan shares this view. The org’s only current female member, Kalei Renay, previously told Decrypt in an interview at TwitchCon that she isn’t a fan of NFTs.

“As a community, everybody hates NFTs,” FaZe Kalei said of gamers. “It’s your money, do whatever, but I don’t care for NFTs. I don’t do crypto, I don’t do any of that. I stay so far away from it.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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