According to Forbes Magazine, there are now 19 billionaires who have grown their fortune primarily in the crypto industry.
Binance’s Changpeng Zhao went from zero to $65 billion in under five years, leaving Michael Dell, Charles Koch and 2,645 other world billionaires in the dust. #ForbesBillionaires https://t.co/fDdi3aCmpP
— Forbes (@Forbes) April 6, 2022
Seven newcomers made the list
Forbes has inducted seven newcomers to the billionaire list, such as OpenSea founders Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, who both hold a net worth of 2.2 billion USD. Forbes notes that OpenSea partly relies on technology provided by the blockchain infrastructure company Alchemy, whose founders Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau (estimated net worth: 2.4 billion USD each) also made the list for the first time this year after a funding round completed in February valued the company at 10.2 billion USD.
Furthermore, two South Koreans have been placed on the list for the first time, with Song Chi-Hyung (3.7 billion USD) and Kim Hyoung-Nyon (1.9 billion USD). Both are major shareholders in South Korea’s leading crypto exchange Upbit.
Changpeng Zhao became the richest man in crypto
According to Forbes’ valuation, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (65 billion USD) has grown his wealth by more than 30-fold over the last year, bumping FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (24 billion USD) from the top spot and becoming the 19th richest person in the world. In the 2021 report, Zhao was only estimated at a net worth of 1.9 billion, while SBF topped the list with 8.7 billion USD.
Overall, centralized crypto exchanges still produce the absolute richest people in crypto, such as Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong (6.6 billion USD) and the Winklevoss twins (4 billion each). The highest-ranking newcomer is FTX CTO Gary Wang with an estimated net worth of 5.9 billion USD.
