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Crypto Billionaires of 2024

Here’s a look at the 17 individuals who have amassed fortunes in the crypto world.

The year 2024 has seen a significant rise in the number of billionaires in the crypto space, with 17 investors and entrepreneurs making ten-digit fortunes on the blockchain. This surge in wealth is largely due to the end of the crypto winter, with Bitcoin more than doubling over the past 12 months and hitting an all-time high of $73,000 in March. This was further bolstered by the U.S. legalizing bitcoin-pegged exchange-traded funds.

The total value of all outstanding cryptocurrencies increased by a staggering 170%, adding some $1.6 trillion in market value over the past 12 months, according to CoinGecko. This impressive growth has helped at least 17 people become crypto billionaires, according to Forbes’ 2024 World’s Billionaires list. This is a significant increase from the nine crypto billionaires last year.

These 17 investors and entrepreneurs have a collective worth of $93 billion, which includes their estimated crypto asset holdings, publicly disclosed stock holdings, and private assets. This is more than double the $37 billion in collective crypto billionaire wealth last year.

For the third consecutive year, Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange Binance, is the wealthiest person in crypto. Despite pleading guilty to U.S. money laundering charges in November, CZ, as he’s known, is now worth an estimated $33 billion, up from $10.5 billion last year. This makes him the biggest crypto gainer in dollar terms since last year and the 50th-wealthiest person in the world. The majority of his fortune comes from his majority stake in Binance, which remains the industry’s largest global trading venue by volume.

Two of this year’s biggest gainers owe their fortunes to investors in their publicly traded companies. Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, a software firm that has made heavy investments in bitcoin, is now worth an estimated $4.4 billion, compared to $760 million last year. Brian Armstrong, CEO of the crypto exchange Coinbase, is worth an estimated $11.2 billion, up from just $2.2 billion last year. Shares of Coinbase and MicroStrategy have each increased more than fourfold over the past 12 months.

Making their debut on Forbes’ annual billionaires ranking are Giancarlo Devasini, Paolo Ardoino, Jean-Louis van der Velde, and Stuart Hoegner, four large shareholders of Tether, a controversial but wildly profitable stablecoin issuer. Crypto’s three-comma club also includes familiar faces like the Winklevoss twins (of Facebook fame), venture capitalist and Nikki Haley booster Tim Draper, and Ripple cofounder and budding space entrepreneur Jed McCaleb.

Here’s a list of the richest people in crypto in 2024:

17. Joe Lau and 16. Nikil Viswanathan:

• Net worth: $1.5 billion each

• Source of wealth: Alchemy

Joe Lau and Nikil Viswanathan, both Stanford alumni, cofounded Alchemy, a Web3 infrastructure provider whose developer suite powers crypto and blockchain projects, in 2020. Investors valued Alchemy at more than $10 billion in early 2022. Today the company is worth about $5.6 billion, based on secondary sales of private shares tracked. Both Lau and Viswanathan have a net worth of $1.5 billion.

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15. Tim Draper:

• Net worth: $2 billion

• Source of wealth: Bitcoin

Tim Draper, a venture capitalist and early Bitcoin investor, bought 29,656 bitcoins confiscated by U.S. Marshals from the shuttered Silk Road black market for $18.7 million, or $632 per coin, in 2014. They are now worth $2 billion. He has also made dozens of VC investments in companies ranging from Tesla to Theranos. His net worth is $2 billion.

14. Stuart Hoegner:

• Net worth: $2.5 billion

• Source of wealth: Tether

Stuart Hoegner has served as general counsel for Tether and its sister company Bitfinex since 2014, and he holds an estimated 13% stake. A Canadian certified accountant, Hoegner began his career at Ernst & Young before starting Gaming Counsel Professional Corporation, a boutique law practice that catered to online gambling and cryptocurrency clients. He was also previously a director of compliance and deputy general counsel at Excapsa Software, an online poker company that became embroiled in a software-facilitated cheating scandal. His net worth is $2.5 billion.

13. Mike Novogratz:

• Net worth: $2.5 billion

• Source of wealth: Galaxy Digital Holdings, Bitcoin

Mike Novogratz, an early bitcoin investor, heads crypto investment firm and merchant bank Galaxy Digital Holdings, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and has about $6 billion in assets under management. His stake in the company is worth about $2 billion. Prior to his career in crypto, Novogratz worked on Wall Street. He spent a decade at Goldman Sachs and then led a macro-focused fund for private equity firm Fortress Investment Group, later becoming the firm’s president. His net worth is $2.5 billion.

12.Tyler Winklevoss and 11.Cameron Winklevoss:

• Net worth: $2.7 billion each

• Source of wealth: Bitcoin, Gemini

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, notorious for their dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook’s founding (as depicted in the 2010 movie The Social Network), have most of their wealth tied up in bitcoin, which they first bought in 2013, and are believed to have large stashes of ethereum and Filecoin as well. The Winklevii also control 75% of Gemini, the crypto exchange they founded together, which aims to compete with the likes of Coinbase and Binance. Outside investors last valued Gemini at over $7 billion in 2021, but Forbes now estimates that Gemini is worth less than $1 billion because its trading volumes have plummeted amid investor and government lawsuits stemming from the 2022 collapse of its interest-bearing program, Gemini Earn. Both Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have a net worth of $2.7 billion.

10. Jed McCaleb

• Net worth: $2.9 billion

• Source of wealth: XRP sales

Jed McCaleb, another early crypto pioneer, created Mt. Gox, the first major bitcoin exchange, in 2010. He sold it a year later, before it was infamously hacked. Next, McCaleb cofounded Ripple in 2012, but soon left over disagreements with fellow founders. Most of his wealth comes from selling much of the original 9 billion XRP he pocketed as a Ripple cofounder. He sold the last of his coins in 2022. (McCaleb also founded Stellar, a Ripple competitor, in 2014.) These days, he spends his time and financial resources on Vast, a space exploration company that he’s backing. His net worth is $2.9 billion.

9. Matthew Roszak:

• Net worth: $3.1 billion

• Source of wealth: Bitcoin, Ethereum

Matthew Roszak, an early investor in bitcoin, made his first purchases in 2010. Most of his wealth comes from early bets on cryptocurrencies, including ethereum and BNB, Binance’s native token. Roszak also runs Bloq, a blockchain startup that invests in other crypto ventures and consults on projects. His net worth is $3.1 billion.

8. Fred Ehrsam:

• Net worth: $3.2 billion

• Source of wealth: Coinbase, Paradigm

Fred Ehrsam founded cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase in 2012 with Brian Armstrong. He left the company in 2017 but remains on the board and still owns about 5% of its stock. In 2018, he cofounded Paradigm, a cryptocurrency investment firm, which now has more than $8 billion in assets under management. His net worth is $3.2 billion.

7. Chris Larsen:

• Net worth: $3.2 billion

• Source of wealth: Ripple, XRP

Chris Larsen cofounded Ripple in 2012 to facilitate international payments using the XRP cryptocurrency. He stepped down 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 recent secondary market data shared with Forbes. He also has a sizable stash of XRP—over 2.8 billion tokens—and nearly $1 billion of cash and investments, per Forbes’ estimates, largely from prior XRP sales. His net worth is $3.2 billion.

6. Jean-Louis van der Velde:

• Net worth: $3.9 billion

• Source of wealth: Tether

Jean-Louis van der Velde, as Tether’s former CEO, operates as a figurehead responsible for maintaining Tether’s high-level strategic relationships with banks and regulators, and owns an estimated 20% of the company. He left the Netherlands in 1985 to attend university in Taiwan, and subsequently cofounded several IT and tech startups in Asia before joining Tether. He lives in Hong Kong. His net worth is $3.9 billion.

5. Paolo Ardoino:

• Net worth: $3.9 billion

• Source of wealth: Tether

Paolo Ardoino serves as Tether’s CEO, its public face and owns an estimated 20% of the company. He joined Tether’s sister company, Bitfinex, as a senior software developer in 2014. Ardoino previously worked in startups as a computer programmer. His net worth is $3.9 billion.

4. Michael Saylor:

• Net worth: $4.4 billion

• Source of wealth: MicroStrategy, Bitcoin

Michael Saylor is the biggest crypto billionaire gainer, in percentage terms, on this year’s list. Shares of MicroStrategy, the software firm Saylor started in the 1990s and refashioned into a bitcoin investment vehicle in recent years, are up nearly 500% from last year. The company now owns about 193,000 bitcoins, making it the largest corporate holder of bitcoin in the world, according to its CFO. Then there’s Saylor’s personal bitcoin stash—Saylor said in 2021 he holds 17,732 bitcoins that he bought at an average price of $9,882 per coin—and he is in the process of cashing out about $200 million of MicroStrategy stock, which he announced at the beginning of the year. His net worth is $4.4 billion.

3. Giancarlo Devasini:

• Net worth: $9.2 billion

• Source of wealth: Tether

Giancarlo Devasini, the CFO of Tether, has seen his net worth rise to $9.2 billion, a significant increase from $4 billion in July. Tether, the largest issuer of stablecoins in the crypto market, has minted over 100 billion tokens. Stablecoins are a unique form of cryptocurrency, pegged to the U.S. dollar or other hard currencies, and serve as a medium of exchange. The higher interest rates have been favorable for Tether, enabling it to generate a profit of $6.2 billion last year from the interest on customers’ collateral. Devasini’s wealth is largely tied to his estimated 47% stake in Tether. Forbes values this stake by applying the average price-to-earnings multiples of a group of publicly traded mid-tier banks and asset managers.

2. Brian Armstrong:

• Net worth: $11.2 billion

• Source of wealth: Coinbase

Brian Armstrong, who co-founded Coinbase in 2013 with Fred Ehrsam, has also seen his wealth grow significantly. His net worth now stands at $11.2 billion, a substantial increase from $2.2 billion. As the largest individual shareholder of Coinbase, Armstrong holds an 18% stake in the company. The crypto exchange’s stock has risen by 50% year-to-date and has tripled since last year, giving it a market capitalization of nearly $60 billion. Armstrong has also sold more than $170 million worth of Coinbase stock since November through an automated 10b5-1 trading plan.

1. Changpeng Zhao:

• Net worth: $33 billion

• Source of wealth: Binance

Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as CZ, has the highest net worth among the three, standing at $33 billion, up from $10.5 billion. Despite agreeing to pay $200 million in fines last year to settle federal money laundering charges brought by the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and stepping down as CEO of crypto exchange Binance, his fortune remains largely unaffected. His stake in Binance, estimated to be 90% based on corporate documents and conversations with former employees, is worth approximately $32.5 billion. Binance continues to be the largest crypto exchange in the world by trading volume, generating an estimated $9 billion of revenue last year. Forbes estimates Binance’s market value by applying the price-to-sales multiple of Coinbase, a publicly traded peer, and then applying further discounts to account for Binance’s concentrated ownership, the possibility of further regulatory enforcement, and key-man risks following CZ’s departure.

₿itcoin reached $65,171. -6.60%

♢Ethereum reached $3,286. -6.99%

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