Forbes: The ranking of the world's richest crypto billionaires in 2024 is released (with list)

The crypto winter is over. Bitcoin has more than doubled in the past 12 months, hitting an all-time high of $73,000 in March, after the U.S. legalized exchange-traded funds tied to the cryptocurrency. The total value of all circulating cryptocurrencies has increased 170% in the past 12 months, adding about $1.6 trillion to its market cap, according to Coingecko.

According to Forbes' 2024 World Billionaires List, at least 17 people have become cryptocurrency billionaires, compared to nine last year. The total value of these 17 investors and entrepreneurs' estimated crypto asset holdings, publicly disclosed stock holdings, and private assets is $93 billion. This is more than double the total wealth of cryptocurrency billionaires of $37 billion last year.

Changpeng Zhao, founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has become the richest person in crypto for the third year in a row. Despite pleading guilty to U.S. money laundering charges in November, CZ is now worth an estimated $33 billion, up from $10.5 billion last year. This makes him the biggest gainer in crypto in U.S. dollar terms since last year and the 50th richest person in the world. The bulk 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 debut 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 asset statistics are as of March 8, 2024; the comparison period is from March 8, 2024 to March 10, 2023.

Top 16: Joe Lau

Net worth: $1.5 billion (up from $1.8 billion last year) | Source of wealth: Alchemy

Top 16: Nikil Viswanathan

Net worth: $1.5 billion (up from $1.8 billion 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, the company is valued at approximately $5.6 billion based on secondary sales of private equity.

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 as of July) | Source of wealth: Tether

Stuart Hoegner has served as general counsel for Tether and its sister company Bitfinex since 2014, and holds an estimated 13% stake. Hoegner is a Canadian CPA 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 at 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 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

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, then led a macro fund at private equity firm Fortress Investment Group and later became president of the company.

12. Tyler Winklevoss

Net worth: $2.7 billion (up from $1.2 billion last year) | Source of wealth: Bitcoin, Gemini

11. Cameron Winklevoss

Net worth: $2.7 billion (up from $1.2 billion last year) | Source of wealth: Bitcoin, Gemini

The Winklevoss twins, infamous for their dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over the creation of Facebook (as depicted in the 2010 film The Social Network), have much of their wealth tied to Bitcoin, which they first purchased in 2013. The Winklevii also control 75% of Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange they co-founded to compete with the likes of Coinbase and Binance. Outside investors last valued Gemini at more than $7 billion in 2021, but Forbes now estimates Gemini's valuation at less than $1 billion as its trading volume has plummeted due to investor and government lawsuits stemming from the collapse of its interest-earning program, Gemini Earn, in 2022.

Top 10: Jed McCaleb

Net worth: $2.9 billion (vs. $2.4 billion last year) | Source of wealth: XRP sales

McCaleb, another early cryptocurrency pioneer, founded Mt. Gox, the first major bitcoin exchange, in 2010. He sold it a year later, after which 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 (up from $930 million 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 remains on the board and still owns about 5% of the company. In 2018, he co-founded cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm, which currently manages more than $8 billion in assets.

Coinbase had revenue of $2.9 billion last year, 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 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 is 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 was responsible for maintaining Tether's high-level strategic relationships with banks and regulators as a figurehead, and owns about 20% of the company. He left the Netherlands for university in Taiwan in 1985 and subsequently co-founded several IT and technology 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 serves as Tether’s CEO, its public face, and owns 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 startups.

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 now owns about 193,000 Bitcoins, making it the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder.

Then there's Saylor's personal Bitcoin stash -- Saylor said he holds 17,732 bitcoins in 2021, which he bought at an average price of $9,882 per bitcoin -- and he's in the process of cashing out about $200 million in MicroStrategy stock, which he announced at the beginning 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 largest issuer of stablecoins in the cryptocurrency space, a type of cryptocurrency that is pegged to the U.S. dollar or other hard currencies and used as a medium of exchange. More than 100 billion Tether tokens have been minted. Tether generated $6.2 billion in profits last year from interest earned on customer collateral, driven by rising interest rates. 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 shares have risen 50% so far this year and more than tripled from last year, giving it a market value of nearly $60 billion. Since November, Armstrong has sold more than $170 million worth of Coinbase shares through automated 10b5-1 trading plans.

Top 1: Changpeng Zhao

Net worth: $33 billion (up from $10.5 billion last year) | Source: 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, according to company documents and conversations with former employees.

Binance remains the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, with an estimated $9 billion in revenue last year, according to a Forbes analysis.