Source: Forbes, compiled by Deng Tong, Golden Finance
The winter of cryptocurrency is over. After the United States legalized exchange-traded funds linked to Bitcoin, Bitcoin has more than doubled in the past 12 months and hit an all-time high of $73,000 in March. According to CoinGecko data, the total value of all circulating cryptocurrencies has increased by 170% in the past 12 months, and the market value has increased by about $1.6 trillion.
According to Forbes' 2024 Global Billionaires List, at least 17 people have become cryptocurrency billionaires, compared with 9 last year. The combined value of the 17 investors and entrepreneurs’ estimated crypto holdings, publicly disclosed stock holdings, and private assets is $93 billion. That’s more than double the combined wealth of last year’s crypto billionaires, which was $37 billion.
Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has been the richest person in crypto for the third year in a row. Although CZ pleaded guilty to U.S. money laundering charges in November, CZ is now worth an estimated $33 billion, up from $10.5 billion last year, as far as he’s known. That makes him the biggest gainer in cryptocurrency in U.S. dollar terms since last year and the 50th richest person in the world. Much of his wealth comes from his majority stake in Binance, which remains the industry’s largest global trading venue by volume.
The two companies with the biggest gains this year have investors in their public companies to thank. Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, a software company that has invested heavily in Bitcoin, is now worth an estimated $4.4 billion, up from $760 million last year. Brian Armstrong, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, is worth an estimated $11.2 billion, up from just $2.2 billion last year. Shares of both Coinbase and MicroStrategy have more than quadrupled in the past 12 months.
Making their first appearance on Forbes’ annual billionaires list are Giancarlo Devasini, Paolo Ardoino, Jean-Louis van der Velde and Stuart Hoegner, four of the largest shareholders in Tether, the controversial but lucrative stablecoin issuer. Crypto’s three-comma club also includes familiar faces like the Winklevoss twins (of Facebook fame), venture capitalist and Nikki Haley backer Tim Draper, and Ripple co-founder and budding space entrepreneur Jed McCaleb.
Here are the richest people in crypto in 2024.
Note: Net worth statistics as of March 8, 2024; comparison period is March 8, 2024 to March 10, 2023.
Top 16: Joe Lau
Net worth: $1.5 billion (US$1.8 billion in the same period last year) | Source of wealth: Alchemy
Top 16: Nikil Viswanathan
Net worth: $1.5 billion (US$1.8 billion in the same period last year) | Source of wealth: Alchemy
The two Stanford alumni co-founded Alchemy in 2020, a Web3 infrastructure provider whose development kit supports cryptocurrency and blockchain projects. In early 2022, investors valued Alchemy at more than $10 billion. Today, based on secondary sales of private equity, the company is valued at approximately $5.6 billion.
Top 15: Tim Draper
Net worth: $2 billion (vs. $650 million) | Source of wealth: Bitcoin
Draper is a venture capitalist and early Bitcoin investor. In 2014, he bought 29,656 Bitcoins seized by U.S. Marshals from the shuttered Silk Road black market for $18.7 million, or $632 per Bitcoin. They are now worth $2 billion. He has also made dozens of venture investments in companies ranging from Tesla to Theranos.
Top 14: Stuart Hoegner
Net worth: $2.5 billion ($1.2 billion in July) | Source of wealth: Tether
Stuart Hoegner has served as general counsel for Tether and its sister company Bitfinex since 2014, where he holds an estimated 13% stake. Hoegner is a Canadian chartered accountant who began his career at Ernst & Young before founding Gaming Counsel Professional Corporation, a law firm that specializes in serving online gambling and cryptocurrency clients. He also served as director of compliance and deputy general counsel for Excapsa Software, an online poker company embroiled in a software cheating scandal.
Tether has been accused of facilitating money laundering for terrorist and criminal organizations, including human trafficking rings that run “pig-killing” crypto scams. (Tether says it follows “KYC and anti-money laundering protocols” and “remains committed to working promptly with law enforcement” to identify criminal activity.) In 2021, Tether and its sister company Bitfinex paid $18.5 million to settle with the New York Attorney General’s Office over allegations that Tether overstated its cash reserves.
Top 13: Mike Novogratz
Net worth: $2.5 billion (returnee) | Source of wealth: Galaxy Digital Holdings, Bitcoin
As an early Bitcoin investor, Novogratz leads Galaxy Digital Holdings, a cryptocurrency investment firm and merchant bank listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange that manages about $6 billion in assets. His stake in the company is worth about $2 billion. Before entering the crypto industry, Novogratz worked on Wall Street. He worked at Goldman Sachs for a decade before heading up a macro fund at private equity firm Fortress Investment Group and later becoming its president.
(1) Tyler Winklevoss
Net worth: $2.7 billion (up from $1.2 billion last year) | Source of wealth: Bitcoin, Gemini
(2) Cameron Winklevoss
Net worth: $2.7 billion (up from $1.2 billion last year) | Source of wealth: Bitcoin, Gemini
The Winklevoss twins are notorious for their feud with Mark Zuckerberg over the creation of Facebook (as depicted in the 2010 film The Social Network), and much of their wealth is tied to Bitcoin, which they first purchased in 2013. The Winklevii also control 75% of Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange they co-founded to compete with the likes of Coinbase and Binance. The last time outside investors valued Gemini at more than $7 billion was in 2021, but Forbes now estimates Gemini's valuation at less than $1 billion as its trading volume has fallen sharply due to investor and government lawsuits sparked by the collapse of its interest-bearing program Gemini Earn in 2022.
Top 10: Jed McCaleb
Net worth: $2.9 billion (up from $2.4 billion a year ago) | Source of wealth: XRP sales
Another early cryptocurrency pioneer, McCaleb founded Mt. Gox, the first major Bitcoin exchange, in 2010. He sold it a year later, before the exchange was infamously hacked. McCaleb next co-founded Ripple in 2012, but soon stopped disagreeing with the other founders. The bulk of his wealth came from selling most of the 9 billion XRP he initially received as a co-founder of Ripple. He sold his last coin in 2022. (McCaleb also founded Ripple competitor Stellar in 2014.) Today, he devotes his time and financial resources to Vast, a space exploration company he backs.
Top 9: Matthew Roszak
Net worth: $3.1 billion (up from $1.1 billion last year) | Source of wealth: Bitcoin, Ethereum
An early investor in Bitcoin, Roszak made his first purchase in 2010. Most of his wealth comes from early bets on cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum and Binance's native token BNB. Roszak also runs Bloq, a blockchain startup that invests in other cryptocurrency ventures and provides project consulting.
Top 8: Fred Ehrsam
Net worth: $3.2 billion (US$930 million in the same period last year) | Source of wealth: Coinbase, Paradigm
Ehrsam co-founded cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase with Brian Armstrong in 2012. He left the company in 2017 but remained on the board and still holds about 5% of the company's shares. In 2018, he co-founded cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm, which currently manages more than $8 billion in assets.
Coinbase's revenue last year was $2.9 billion, down from $3.1 billion in 2022 and $7.8 billion in 2021 when cryptocurrency prices last surged. But the company has returned to profitability, with a net profit of $100 million, compared with a net loss of $2.6 billion in 2022.
Top 7: Chris Larsen
Net worth: $3.2 billion (up from $2.2 billion last year) | Source of wealth: Ripple, XRP
Larsen co-founded Ripple in 2012 to facilitate international payments using the XRP cryptocurrency. He resigned as Ripple's CEO in late 2016 but remains executive chairman. He holds an 18% stake in Ripple, which investors value at $3.8 billion, according to secondary market data recently shared by Forbes. He also owns a large amount of XRP (more than 2.8 billion tokens) and nearly $1 billion in cash and investments, much of which came from previous XRP sales, according to Forbes estimates.
Top 6: Jean-Louis van der Velde
Net worth: $3.9 billion ($1.8 billion in July) | Source of wealth: Tether
As Tether’s former CEO, van der Velde served as a figurehead responsible for maintaining Tether’s high-level strategic relationships with banks and regulators, and owns about 20% of the company. He left the Netherlands for university in Taiwan in 1985 and subsequently co-founded several IT and tech startups in Asia before joining Tether. He lives in Hong Kong.
Top 5: Paolo Ardoino
Net worth: $3.9 billion ($1.8 billion in July) | Source of wealth: Tether
Ardoino served as Tether’s CEO, its public face, and owned about 20% of the company. He joined Tether's sister company Bitfinex as a senior software developer in 2014. Ardoino previously worked as a computer programmer at a startup.
Top 4: Michael Saylor
Net worth: $4.4 billion (up from $760 million last year) | Source of wealth: MicroStrategy, Bitcoin
Saylor is the biggest gainer on this year's list, in percentage terms. Software company Saylor was founded in the 1990s and has transformed itself into a Bitcoin investment vehicle in recent years, with MicroStrategy's stock price up nearly 500% from last year. According to its chief financial officer, the company currently owns about 193,000 Bitcoins, making it the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holder.
Then there’s Saylor’s personal Bitcoin stash — Saylor says he holds 17,732 bitcoins in 2021, which he bought at an average price of $9,882 per bitcoin — and he’s cashing out about $200 million in MicroStrategy shares, which he announced at the start of the year.
Top 3: Giancarlo Devasini
Net worth: $9.2 billion ($4 billion in July) | Source of wealth: Tether
Devasini is the chief financial officer and likely the largest individual shareholder of Tether, the cryptocurrency space’s largest issuer of stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency that’s pegged to the dollar or other hard currency and used as a medium of exchange. More than 100 billion Tether tokens have been minted. Driven by rising interest rates, Tether generated $6.2 billion in profits last year from interest earned on customer collateral. Devasini owns an estimated 47% of Tether, which Forbes values using the average price-to-earnings ratio of a group of publicly traded mid-sized banks and asset managers.
Top 2: Brian Armstrong
Net worth: $11.2 billion (up from $2.2 billion last year) | Source of wealth: Coinbase
Armstrong co-founded Coinbase with Fred Ehrsam in 2013 and is the company's largest individual shareholder with an 18% stake. The cryptocurrency exchange's stock price has risen 50% so far this year, more than quadrupling from last year, with a market value of nearly $60 billion. Since November, Armstrong has sold more than $170 million worth of Coinbase shares through an automated 10b5-1 trading plan.
Top 1: Changpeng Zhao
Net worth: $33 billion (up from $10.5 billion last year) | Source of wealth: Binance
Changpeng Zhao (CZ) agreed last year to personally pay a $200 million fine to settle federal money laundering charges brought by the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (Binance agreed to pay an additional $4.5 billion.) He also agreed to resign as CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance and to be barred from Binance for three years as part of his guilty plea. (CZ’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 30). But it has made little difference to his wealth. His stake in Binance is estimated at 90%, worth about $32.5 billion, based on company documents and conversations with former employees.
Binance remains the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, with an estimated $9 billion in revenue last year, according to a Forbes analysis.
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