Meet the crypto billionaires club — what the rising numbers mean

Not too long ago, the combined market cap of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum used to be a few billion dollars. These projects led to the rise of the first crypto millionaires, who traded and accumulated tokens as their value grew from nothing to something.

Now, when individual cryptos have market caps that often cross a trillion dollars, several crypto billionaires have emerged, a group that has been expanding over the last couple of years.

These wealthy individuals run businesses based on crypto-like centralised exchanges and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols. They can also be crypto whales who have accumulated tokens that are now worth large fortunes.

Here is a look at the new breed of billionaires that have made it to the rich lists and also the way forward

When Forbes began ranking the crypto rich, it had its own separate list with a cut-off of around 350 million dollars to make it to the list. Today, there seems to be no need for a different list, as 19 of the crypto-rich now feature on the Forbes Billionaires Index itself.

The richest known crypto billionaire in the world today is the founder of Binance, Chanpeng Zhao, with an estimated net worth of over $65 billion. Most of his fortune comes from his ownership of Binance (about 70 percent of it approximately) and his whale-like holdings in BTC and BNB (the native token of Binance). Binance is currently the world’s largest crypto exchange and has posted a revenue of over $16 billion in the past year.

The second on the list with a net worth of around $24 billion is the founder of Hong Kong-based crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried. He moved from Hong Kong to the crypto-friendlier environment of Bahamas to continue building FTX, which has now become the darling of venture capital firms like Sequoia.

Other billionaires who have made it to the list are Ripple’s Chris Larsen, the infamous Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and South Korea’s UpBit founder Song Chi-Hyung among others. The list of crypto billionaires currently consists of fewer traders, early investors, and more founders of exchanges and blockchains. This is quite natural in an industry that has yet to reach most of the masses.

In the list above, we don’t see the names of Satoshi Nakamoto or Vitalik Buterin because they haven’t entirely disclosed the number of tokens they currently possess. According to some estimates, the pseudonymous founder of bitcoin holds nearly one million bitcoin, which already would make them one of the wealthiest people on the planet.

The above examples are the big ones, but there are many more whales with a high net worth who are still unnamed and will probably continue to be, considering the transparent yet pseudonymous beauty of cryptocurrency.

The list has increased over 40 percent this year, and there will soon be more joining this elite group. So, what does the bigger picture look like?

With founders and investors in crypto exchanges making it to the three-comma club, it seems more and more people are actively involved in cryptocurrency. For now, this adoption is largely restricted to crypto investors and traders. However, native utility of tokens and DeFi protocols could also increase over time.

Billions are being poured into the crypto economy. This leads to the price appreciation of the various tokens, making billionaires out of the whales. It is a sign that the common person is also seeing benefits of crypto and using it as a store of wealth.

With exponentially grown fortunes, those at the helm of crypto platforms can pump more resources into research and development. This leads to added innovation and progression of blockchain and crypto technologies. Moreover, spurred on by the massive wealth early founders and developers have amassed through their projects, budding developers are inspired to push the envelope and build better systems.

The unequal distribution of wealth is a cause of concern in government-run finance, and crypto was seen as the answer to this issue. But what we see is still more of the same, and it perhaps has more to do with how human greed works than anything finance related.

A rising case of billionaires appears when a new technology gains mass adoption. It is what happened with the industrial revolution, with oil and fossil fuels, software and computers, social media and now cryptocurrency. It is undeniably what is going to shape our near future. And while some see the growing list of the crypto-rich as disproportionate wealth, there will always be capitalists who call it a reward for innovation.