As the cryptocurrency market has grown steadily, nine representatives of the cryptocurrency industry have joined Forbes’ 35th annual list of billionaires.
FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried and MicroStrategy director Michael Sailor are among the newcomers to this year’s rankings, while Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao is back in the ranks of the moneybags in the industry. Previously, he was dropped from the Forbes list during the bearish cycle of the crypto market, that is, the stage of the fall. Let’s talk about the situation in more detail.
To begin with, let’s clarify that Michael Sailor was on the list for a reason. His company MicroStrategy began making large investments in Bitcoin in the summer of 2020, which seriously affected the reputation of the first cryptocurrency. In addition, the analyst giant has essentially set a new trend among other companies.
We have checked the actual data. Today, Bitcoin is listed in the investment portfolio of 21 public companies – that is, those whose shares are traded on the stock exchange. Moreover, MicroStrategy is the leader in terms of savings.
The company managed to accumulate 91,579 bitcoins and invested $ 2.22 billion in them. Now this volume of cryptocurrencies is equivalent to 5.2 billion, that is, earnings in fact are already almost 3 billion.
However, it is important to note here that the company’s management does not plan to get rid of bitcoins in the near future. As Michael Sailor noted earlier, an investment is not made for the sake of earning, but for the transition to a new type of economy. And if necessary, they will hold BTC for at least a hundred years.
The richest cryptocurrency investors
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is the richest of the crypto billionaires, with a net worth of $ 8.7 billion. In second place is Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, whose fortune grew from $ 1 billion last year to $ 6.5 billion in 2021, Decrypt reports. However, soon Armstrong’s fortune can expect another sharp jump amid the IPO of his crypto exchange this month.
As a reminder, Coinbase will go public through a so-called direct listing. The company’s plans became known at the end of 2020, and the management even managed to postpone the process due to problems with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. However, now all the issues have been settled: the listing will take place on April 14, 2021.
On the eve of Coinbase also reported on the results of work in the first quarter. The exchange’s income was $ 1.8 billion, and the net profit was $ 730-800 million. Compared to the previous quarter, the indicators increased by 207 and 312 percent, respectively.
The Forbes ranking is disputed by other publications. In March, the Hurun Research Institute in China ranked Armstrong and Fried as the first and second richest in the crypto industry, respectively, with Armstrong’s fortune reaching $ 11.5 billion according to Hurun, and Fried’s fortune of $ 10 billion. Accordingly, the exact data may vary, although the scale of funds is approximately the same.
Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen is ranked third on the Forbes list with $ 3.4 billion in net worth. Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb made the list for the first time this year with a fortune of $ 2 billion. Other newcomers include the famous twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Against the backdrop of bullruns, the capital of each of the Winklevoss reached $ 3 billion.
The list of cryptocurrency billionaires is closed by MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor with $ 2.3 billion, early crypto investor Matthew Roszak with $ 1.5 billion in crypto, venture capitalist Tim Draper with a similar $ 1.5 billion and Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam: he has $ 1.9 billion. Also on the list were Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao with $ 1.9 billion and Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert, whose fortune is estimated at $ 1.6 billion.
We believe that the update to the Forbes ranking once again highlights the incredible prospects that the cryptocurrency industry is opening up to. The blockchain asset niche is still young, which means that its further development and the discovery of new use cases will have a significant impact on investors. Examples of this are decentralized finance, which enriched many traders last summer, and the current popularity of NFT tokens.
Therefore, further in the ratings of people with a large fortune, there will be more and more representatives of the cryptocurrency industry. Now the market is more than contributing to this.