Exclusive interview with parents of crypto mogul Gary Wang – Eastside

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In the third episode of The Wang Files

Gary Wang, formerly known as Zixiao Wang, has recently come under intense scrutiny for his involvement in a multi-billion dollar scandal with cryptocurrency exchange FTX. An Eastside editor got a glimpse of Wang’s worldview through an exclusive interview with his parents, something no other media source was able to do.

I felt like we were living in two different worlds. He was very naive, believing everyone around him was good. He was idealistic and caring for the world. This is who Gary Wang is in the eyes of his father.

At age eight, Wang left China for Minnesota. From an early age, he showed a great aptitude for mathematics and science. In sixth grade, Wang was tested in the University of Minnesota Rochester’s Talented Youth in Mathematics Program (UMTYMP), where he remained in the program for four years until ninth grade and completed learning the calculation. These four years of study were instrumental in the development of his later interests in mathematics and computer science.

In 2008, as a sophomore in high school, Wang moved to South Jersey and attended Cherry Hill High School East, where he took the highest-level math course available on multivariate calculus. . Throughout high school, he competed in the American Mathematics Competition (AMC) and the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) and was consistently ranked in the top 50 in the nation.

Many believed that Wang was only good at STEM subjects, however, according to his father, Wang was a fast and avid reader during his elementary and secondary school years. Her parents recalled how they took Wang to the library every weekend in middle school to foster her love of reading. However, after entering high school, he spent most of his free time and summers on computers and coding.

From an early age, he was very quiet and focused only on his strongest interest in math and coding, his father explained.

As a result, Wang would not have had much time to prepare for her classes and tests. Her parents remembered that sometimes Wang only started studying the night before her SAT subject tests. In several cases, he would still get a perfect score because he already had a strong conceptual understanding of STEM subjects.

Although he was on the passive side, his parents thought that Wang had a good high school experience and also enjoyed his college life.

He had a close relationship with his friends and enjoyed running the Math Club in high school, his father said. He also made some good friends in college.

After entering the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Wang’s worldview was largely influenced by his peers and upbringing, and he became more environmentally conscious.

Wang (right) laughs alongside a teammate after losing a 2012 Maslab robotics competition at MIT.

When I bought him bottled water, he said he preferred to drink tap water because it was more environmentally friendly, his father said. He wears a T-shirt every four seasons. After college, he no longer eats meat, eggs, or drinks milk.

He also talked about Wang’s simple lifestyle. Wang didn’t want to save money to buy a house, but preferred to rent instead.

As for him, he led a very frugal lifestyle, ate vegetarian, spent minimally and reinvested his own earnings into the business, said his father, who seemed to struggle to understand his son’s point of view.

If there was one thing we could tell everyone, his father says, it would be that he has a good heart and treats the Earth with care and love.

Wang’s parents also believed that Wang didn’t care about the financial aspect of FTX, he often didn’t bother to ask for reimbursement of company-related expenses.

As for FTX, he wasn’t interested in the communication or management parts of the business. He was only interested in his share of the work, [which was] coding, says his mother.

When FTX started, his parents said they repeatedly warned him to obey the law, but Wang told them not to worry because the company had plenty of lawyers to make sure the business was operating legally.

When I [first] heard the news of [FTX fraud]I was shocked and very worried, remembers his father.

Wang pleaded guilty to federal charges in December 2022 and is cooperating with prosecutors.

Wang’s father added: Now that it has happened, we advise him to face reality and face whatever is happening.

The original interview was conducted in Chinese and the quotes were translated into English.

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