It’s been a wild twelve months for the crypto world, from the Elon Musk-fueled ascent of Dogecoin, to Web3 innovations and NFTs, to the wild swings in Bitcoin and Altcoins. Amid all the action there has come emergence of billionaires in the dwindling market. Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires list has in detail the billionaires who made their money from crypto and blockchain tech. Some have maintained their positions, others lost, and there are newcomers.
Crypto’s richest person, Binance founder and CEO “CZ” is the 19th richest person in the world. Forbes estimates that he owns at least 70% of Binance. The Canadian tech guru is estimated to have a Net worth of $65 billion: A raise from last years’ $1.9 billion.
The 30-year-old moved from Hong Kong to the more crypto-friendly Bahamas in late 2021 alongside his exchange FTX. The U.S. citizen is estimated to have a Net worth of $24 billion from running FTX.
The CEO and founder of Coinbase took the crypto exchange public through a direct listing in April 2021 at a stunning $100 billion valuation. Its market cap is below half that today, still good enough to make Armstrong–with his 19% stake–the third wealthiest person in crypto. He is estimated to have a networth of $6.6 Billion.
The cofounder and chief technology officer of FTX, Wang, holds a 16% stake in FTX’s global business and over $600 million worth FTT, the native token of FTX. The U.S citizen is estimated to have a Net worth of $5.9 billion.
The cofounder and executive chairman of blockchain company Ripple has kept busy fighting against a SEC lawsuit–first filed in December 2020. Despite that he has a Net worth valued at $4.3 billion.
The twin brothers–best known as Mark Zuckerberg’s college nemeses –have turned their $65 million settlement with Zuck into digital gold, amassing crypto fortunes of roughly $4 billion apiece.
The Forbes Billionaires list had 19 names in it. This is a good thing for crypto despite the present crypto winter. Others who made it to the list include: 8. Song Chi-hyung- with a Net worth of $3.7 billion from Upbit crypto exchange. 9. Barry Silbert with a Net worth of $3.2 billion from Digital Currency Group investment firm.
10. Jed McCaleb with a Net worth of $2.5 billion from Ripple Labs and XRP. 11 and 12 Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau- each with a Net worth of $2.4 billion from blockchain decacorn Alchemy. 13 and 14. Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah each with a Net worth of $2.2 billion from OpenSea
15. Fred Ehrsam valued at $2.1 billion from Coinbase 16. Kim Hyoung-nyon with a Net worth of $1.9 billion from Upbit 17. Michael Saylor valued at $1.6 billion from MicroStrategy 18. Matthew Roszak with a networth of $1.4 billion. His wealth is traced to crypto investments . 19. Tim Draper valued at $1.2 billion. Like Matthew, his wealth is traced to crypto investments.