Billionaire TikToker who’s become one of the most influential election voices online gives shock 2024 prediction
The billionaire co-founder of Susquehanna International Group (SIG) – which has a $21 billion stake in TikTok – has placed his bet on the winner of this year’s presidential election.
Jeff Yass – an experienced poker player with a keen sense of making big returns on his investments – is currently the richest man in Pennsylvania with a personal fortune of $47 billion.
Yass has doled out some of his fortune to various organizations and has become one of the biggest backers of the anti-tax political advocacy group Club for Growth.
The billionaire is rumored to be in line for a possible spot in the presidential cabinet if his predicted winner emerges victorious: Donald Trump.
His political fortunes may not be a surprise to those who know Yass, but his support for Trump comes as a shock to those familiar with the businessman’s one-time opinion of the presidential candidate.
Jeff Yass, businessman and co-founder and director of Susquehanna International Group (SIG), supports Donald Trump in the 2024 elections
The support comes as a shock after his comments against Trump during a 2022 interview with the Wall Street Journal
‘He has no donors. He doesn’t need the money. He gets so much free publicity,” Yass told the newspaper Wall Street Journal in 2022.
‘It’s not like you can influence him at all. The only thing you can appeal to is, “You’re going to lose and be humiliated.”
A native of New York, Yass wrote his dissertation on the ethics of options trading while attending SUNY Binghamton.
He studied economics and mathematics while having fun playing poker and backgammon.
During that time, he and his college friends Steve Bloom, Eric Brooks, Andrew Frost and Joel Greenberg founded SIG, which has since grown into a tech company empire worth nearly $67 billion at the end of March.
SIG also invested in 2012 and now owns a 15 percent stake in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
Yass wrote his dissertation on the ethics of options trading while studying at SUNY Binghamton. He attended New York University for graduate studies, but did not graduate
SIG invested in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, in 2012. Trump was in favor of the TikTok ban until March 2024 after meeting with Yass
The growing bond between Yass and Trump could come to an end because the newly elected president supported a TikTok ban in the US.
However, that quickly changed last March, after shares of Digital World Acquisition Corporation rose 30 percent.
Digital World Acquisition Corporation merged with the former president’s Media & Technology Group earlier that month, much of that thanks to Yass.
The stock jump helped boost Trump’s fortune to $6.5 billion and put him on Bloomberg’s list of the 500 richest people for the first time.
On the heels of Trump’s historic financial successes, he changed his position on banning TikTok, arguing it would empower Facebook, which he said was the “enemy of the people.”
Yass is currently one of the top contenders to become Trump’s Treasury Secretary if he wins the 2024 election
Yass, who has been a registered libertarian since 1996, has political views that have not come without controversy.
The businessman has spent millions of dollars funding politicians who focus on minimizing government interference in areas such as taxes, trade, education and gaming.
Trump is one of those politicians, and the donation even led to Yass not receiving an invitation to the annual economic retreat hosted by Club for Growth in 2023, as the group shunned the former president.
However, Trump claimed that he and the Club for Growth are “in love again” and his meeting with Yass at one of the group’s retreats took place just before changing his position on the TikTok ban.
Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung claims there have been “no discussions about who will serve in a second Trump administration.”