Who is Tiffany Fong? YouTuber and crypto journalist lauded by Elon Musk for explaining why she will be voting for Trump
Internet personality Tiffany Fong recently took to X to reveal to her 171K followers who she would be voting for in the upcoming presidential election. On October 14, 2024, the YouTuber and crypto journalist announced that she would vote for Donald Trump, stating she considered Kamala Harris "stupid."
In her post, Fong clarified that she was neither radically left nor right-leaning but elected to go with the Republican nominee for the 2024 election.
"I don’t actually consider myself radically right or radically left. i just think kamala harris is stupid & i am voting for donald trump," Fong tweeted.
Elon Musk, who has been actively advocating for Trump, praised Tiffany Fong for her choice. He replied to her initial tweet with two fire emojis.
Fong responded to his reply by thanking him, adding the tech billionaire was "so f*cking cool."
Tiffany Fong gained popularity after covering several high-profile crypto scandals like Celcius and FTX on her social media platforms. Her journey in posting about crypto scandals began after she lost $200,000 worth of Bitcoin in Celsius in 2022.
Fong was also personally involved with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years for fraud. During the FTX scandal, Fong acted as a whistleblower, often visiting him when he was under house arrest and holding interviews with him.
Tiffany Fong is a University of Southern California alumni
Born on March 19, 1994, Tiffany Fong grew up in Las Vegas. In an October 2023 interview with Rolling Stone, she described herself as "painfully shy," but noted that she gradually overcame her shyness and was voted “life of the party" at her high school.
Fong earned her communications degree from the University of Southern California in 2017. In the interview, she mentioned that she did not find the idea of working a nine-to-five job appealing. After graduating, she backpacked for three years to discover her ambition. Her travels came to an end when COVID-19 hit, following which she was introduced to the world of cryptocurrency.
In 2021, Fong invested $200,000 in Bitcoin in a startup called Celcius. The following year, the company declared bankruptcy, causing her to lose her money. This instigated her to post about cryptocurrency on social media, where she detailed her journey with Celcius.
After her social media posts blew up, several insider sources from Celcius approached her with sensitive information about the company and its executives. Fong started leaking the information online because she wanted people to see what happened to their money. From there, her career as a trusted crypto journalist took off. In a 2023 interview with Axios, she said:
"I was deeply depressed when Celsius went down, so I started posting as an outlet to vent about how angry I was. I had no expectation of developing a following. It just snowballed."
Tiffany Fong's documentation of the Celcius leak caught the eye of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. He reportedly contacted her after his company filed for bankruptcy in 2022 amid fraud allegations. The two kept in touch, with the crypto entrepreneur inviting Fong to his home for interviews while he was under house arrest following his arrest for fraud in December 2022.
In her Rolling Stone interview, Tiffany Fong claimed that Bankman-Fried gave her over 200 pages of private Google documents. She added he asked her to leak segments from them on social media.
“Sam told me he wants things to be leaked before the trial so that they have some effect. So he’s sort of given me permission, like, ‘Oh, I think it would be good for you to leak some things’,” she said in the interview.
Tiffany Fong was also seen at Bankman-Fried's trial, documenting it for her YouTube channel. She has several videos about FTX and Celsius on her channel, which has over 46K subscribers.