27. Januar 2022

Six New Crypto Billionaires Join The 2021 Forbes 400

America, meet the next generation of ultra-wealthy. For the first time ever, seven billionaires who built their fortune in the world of cryptocurrencies make the list of the nation’s richest—six of them are newcomers.

The crypto septet on this year’s Forbes 400 list is collectively worth an estimated $55.1 billion. Almost a half of that treasure trove, $22.5 billion, belongs to one man—the 29-year-old CEO of crypto derivatives exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried. In two years, Bankman-Fried built what is now one of the industry’s largest trading platforms, processing $13.8 billion in daily volume. In a testament to its own success, in July, FTX closed a $900 million Series B fundraise, crypto’s largest venture capital round to date, at an $18 billion valuation.

Other first-timers include Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, whose exchange made its public markets debut in April with the largest direct listing in history ($86 billion), Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, owners of Coinbase competitor Gemini, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, and Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple, a San Francisco-based company facilitating international financial transactions with blockchain technology.

They join Chris Larsen, another Ripple co-founder, who appeared on the list last year with a net worth of $2.7 billion. Today, his wealth is estimated at $6 billion.

The increase in the number of crypto billionaires is largely a byproduct of unprecedented levels of mainstream interest in the space, led by institutional investors, as digital currencies have set new price records across the board. Since the release of last year’s list in September 2020, the price of Bitcoin has surged from $10,128 to $50,078, the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, has risen nearly a 1,000%, and crypto’s total market cap crossed $1 trillion for the first time to peak at $2.4 trillion in May.

But this may be just the beginning. A number of startups in the vertical, including Ripple, Kraken, Circle, BlockFi, and eToro announced or hinted at plans of going public. Additionally, venture capital firms, headlined by Andreessen Horowitz’s $2.2 billion crypto fund, are poised to drive the value of leading private companies in the industry into the stratosphere.

That said, the volatile nature of crypto, which has seen the price of Bitcoin ping-pong between $29,000-$64,000 this year alone, can dramatically sway the fortunes of crypto-preneurs. Additionally, as the industry evolves and matures, regulators across the world are paying more attention to the space. Though often branded FUD within the crypto community for “fear, uncertainty and doubt” these concerns sow, they have the tendency to move the market downward and, by extension, much of the wealth accumulated by the savviest.