The 17 richest people in the crypto world have lost $116 billion in the space of a few months.
The crypto winter is taking its toll on crypto billionaires. There are reportedly only 7 now, down from 17 in March according to the latest Forbes rankings. In total, the 17 richest people in the crypto world have lost $116 billion in the space of a few months.
It must be said that many events have followed one another: from the collapse of the Terra Luna ecosystem last spring, through the June crypto crash, to the bankruptcy of the giant FTX. As a result, the two main cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and ether, have lost 70% of their value from their historical peak in November 2021. A fall in prices that has a major impact on the fortunes of these bosses.
Already, there are those who have lost everything, such as former FTX boss Samuel Bankman-Fried (SBF), who went from $24 billion last March (being the world's second richest crypto-billionaire) to $100,000 today. Extradited to the US last week after being jailed in the Bahamas, he was released on $250,000 bail last Thursday. Gary Wang, the other co-founder of FTX, also saw his $5.9 billion fortune wiped out. So did Barry Silbert, boss of Digital Currency Group, the ailing crypto lending arm of Genesis Global Capital, whose fortune was estimated at just over $3bn.
Changpeng Zao, from $65 billion to $4.5 billion
Meanwhile, Brian Armstrong, the boss of crypto trading platform Coinbase, saw his fortune fall from $6 billion to $1.5 billion, given the difficulties his trading platform went through during the crypto winter. But the man who lost the most money in a few months was Changpeng Zao (CZ), the boss of crypto giant Binance. His personal fortune has gone from $65 billion in March this year to... 4.5 billion dollars today, according to Forbes estimates.
A Binance spokesperson said the estimate was not an important "metric" for CZ, "What's more important is creating meaningful use cases for crypto," he said.
While he remains at the top of Forbes' crypto billionaire rankings, he has almost been overtaken by the only boss who has managed to maintain his pre-crypto winter standard of living. This is the co-founder of crypto company Ripple, Jed McCaleb, whose fortune hovers around $2 billion.
"That's because he sold almost everything before the crisis. McCaleb got rid of some $2.5 billion of XRP, Ripple's native token, between December 2020 and July 2022, fulfilling the separation agreement he signed with Ripple's other founders in 2013," Forbes says.