Blockchain Capital: The 10 Richest Crypto Billionaires of the Year from Bits.media

What are we talking about?

In 2024, the richest cryptocurrency billionaires will be: Changpeng Zhao, Brian Armstrong, Giancarlo Devasini, Michael Saylor, Paolo Ardoino, Jean-Velli (Jean-Louis van der Velde), Chris Larsen, Fred Ehrsam, Matthew Roszak, and Jed McCaleb .

Forbes magazine estimates the wealth of billionaires as part of the World’s Billionaires List every year. Let’s take a look at what each of the main heroes have earned.

Changpeng Zhao – net worth $33 billion

Changpeng Zhao is a Canadian-Chinese entrepreneur and co-founder of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance. Before creating the exchange, he worked for large high-tech companies (Bloomberg Tradebook, Fusion Systems and Blockchain.com). Binance appeared in 2017.

Changpeng Zhao is not currently in a leadership position at the company, but has a large 90% stake in Binance.

Recently, a court in the United States sentenced a businessman to four months in prison for not properly building a customer verification system and an anti-money laundering (KYC / AML) system at Binance during his leadership. Zhao is currently serving his sentence.

Brian Armstrong – net worth $11.2 billion

Brian Armstrong is an American entrepreneur and investor, who founded the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (NASDAQ:). Before founding the exchange, Armstrong worked as a software engineer for several technology companies, including IBM (NYSE:) and Airbnb (NASDAQ:).

In 2021, Coinbase became the first digital currency exchange to go public. The listing of the company’s shares on the stock exchange marked a new level in the legalization of the entire cryptocurrency industry.

However, since the middle of last year, the exchange has been suing the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The group accuses the company of illegal brokerage activity and trading in cryptocurrencies, which, according to the regulator, are securities. Bloomberg estimated the exchange’s chances of winning against the SEC at 70%.

Giancarlo Devasini – net worth $9.2 billion

Giancarlo Devasini is an Italian doctor turned successful crypto entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CFO of , the company that issues USDT, the world’s most popular stablecoin.

Despite his education in plastic surgery, Devazini chose to build a career as a financier. In 2014, he and his partners founded Tether.

Devazini owns about 47% of Tether, making him the company’s largest shareholder, according to Forbes. In addition, Devazini receives significant income from the interest generated by Tether on its clients’ collateral.

Michael Saylor – net worth $4.4 billion

Michael Saylor is the co-founder of the American software company MicroStrategy.

In 2020, the entrepreneur decided to invest the company’s money in Bitcoin. Four years later, the strategy has exceeded the investment return of one of the most famous investment companies in the world, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:) Warren Buffett. On August 10 of this year, MicroStrategy had 226,500 BTC worth $13.771 billion, which it bought at an average price of about $37,000.

Paolo Ardoino – net worth $3.9 billion

Paolo Ardoino is the CEO of Tether. He is the main public face of the company, with around 20% of its shares.

Ardoino began his path to success in 2014 when he joined Bitfinex, a subsidiary of Tether, as a senior software developer.

Jean-Louis van der Velde – net worth $3.9 billion

Jean-Louis van der Velde is a crypto entrepreneur who is one of the founders of Tether.

At Tether, van der Velde was one of the key partners in the development and launch of the platform. He was the CEO of the company until 2019.

Now he is still an influential person, with about 20% of the shares.

Chris Larsen – net worth $3.2 billion

Chris Larsen is an American entrepreneur who is known as one of the first cryptocurrency billionaires. He is the co-founder of Labs, the company that created the XRP cryptocurrency.

Although Larsen stepped down as Ripple’s CEO at the end of 2016, he remains the company’s executive chairman.

Late last year, the SEC dropped charges against him in an investigation that he violated securities laws by selling XRP to institutional investors.

Fred Ehrsam – net worth: $3.2 billion

Fred Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase, as well as Paradigm, a cryptocurrency investment company.

Ersam started his career at Goldman Sachs (NYSE:). In 2012, he founded Coinbase with Brian Armstrong. Ersam left Coinbase in 2017, but is still on the board of directors and owns about 4% of the shares.

Matthew Roszak – net worth: $3.1 billion

Matthew Roszak is a venture capitalist and early investor in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He became one of the first people to invest a lot of money in Bitcoin, when the cost of the first cryptocurrency was only a few cents.

In addition to , Roszak has also successfully invested in , and several other cryptocurrencies, many of which subsequently showed remarkable growth.

Jed McCaleb – net worth: $2.9 billion

Jed McCaleb is the founder of the first major Bitcoin exchange, MtGox, and co-founder of Ripple.

McCaleb launched MtGox in 2010 and then sold it a year later – before the market was hacked. In 2012 he co-founded Ripple. But a year later he left the company due to disagreements with other founders.

The main capital of the entrepreneur came from the sale of 9 billion XRP coins received as a co-founder of Ripple.

Decision

While cryptocurrencies exist, many have made money from them. But a fortune was made by those who understood, even at the beginning of the creation of the cryptocurrency industry, the ability to develop. Some of these people were simply investing in digital assets, making money on their increase in value. And some created an entire infrastructure: exchanges and new coins.

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