The Forbes crypto billionaires list has been revised, and the number of people who have gained huge sums of money using digital assets has risen dramatically. The crypto elite list now includes 19 billionaires, up from seven last year and a 58 percent increase.
Forbes’s newest crypto wealthiest was issued on April 5.
- Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO and creator of Binance
CZ remains the king of the crypto industry, and owing to his relatively recent fortune, he is currently the 19th richest man in the world. According to Forbes, CZ’s worth has been lowered from an estimated $96 billion last year to a current estimate of $65 billion. This still makes him the wealthiest person in the crypto industry.
2. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX
Sam Bankman-Fried is the second richest person in the crypto world, with a net worth of $24 billion. He’s been dubbed “Crypto Robin Hood” because he’s repeatedly stated that he intends to give away the majority of his wealth. But, with $24 billion in cash on hand, he hasn’t been able to do so yet.
3. Brian Armstrong, the CEO, and creator of Coinbase
Brian Armstrong is in third place with $6.6 billion. Coinbase’s CEO and creator took the crypto exchange public with a direct listing in April 2021, valuing it at a staggering $100 billion. Its market value is now roughly half that, but Armstrong remains the third wealthiest crypto investor, with a 19% stake in Coinbase.
4. Gary Wang, FTX co-founder, and chief technical officer
Gary Wang is a newcomer to the crypto billionaire list. He entered the list with a bang. He holds a 16 percent stake in FTX’s global business, as well as over $600 million in FTT, the company’s native token. His net worth is $5.6 billion, which makes him the fourth richest person in the crypto world.
5. Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple
Chris Larsen is the co-founder and executive chairman of Ripple, whose XRP coin is presently the world’s eighth-largest cryptocurrency. With a net worth of $4.3 billion, he became the fifth richest crypto investor in the world.
6. The Winklevoss twins of Gemini
The brothers started buying bitcoin in 2012 and have since expanded their digital asset holdings by purchasing other cryptocurrencies and creating the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini. The Winklevoss twins of Gemini are in sixth place, each having a net worth of roughly $4 billion.
7. Song Chi-Hyung, founder of South Korea’s Upbit exchange
Chi-Hyung, the founder of South Korea’s top crypto exchange, Upbit, has profited from the country’s expanding $46 billion crypto sector. Song Chi-Hyung is in seventh place with a net worth of $3.7 billion.
There are numerous more famous names on the list such as, Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau, co-founders of the blockchain and Web3 firm Alchemy. The couple is said to have a combined net worth of $2.4 billion, putting them in eleventh place.
Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, co-founders of the OpenSea NFT marketplace, who are also newcomers to this year’s crypto-rich list, with a combined net worth of $2.2 billion. Kim Hyoung-Nyon, executive vice president of South Korea’s Dunamu, owns an estimated 13% of Upbit and has a net worth of $1.9 billion.
MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor has remained a crypto billionaire with a net worth of $1.6 billion. Following a successful Bitcoin gamble, the company’s stock has doubled in the previous two years.
The first crypto elite list was released by Forbes in 2018, with only a few CEOs making the cut. The threshold was substantially lower back then, with a wealth figure of $350 million required to make the list.
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