The Hurun Global Rich List was published a week ago, and according to the list, the cryptocurrency industry has made 5 billionaires by far. Further, Hurun annunciated blockchain to be the fastest-growing new industry, in spite of the bearish crypto market trend that was established last year and arguably persists even today.
Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun chairman, elaborated –
“Whilst crypto values may have plummeted in the past year, a handful of businesses have started to spring up. Many billionaires from other sectors have now started to invest into blockchain technology.”
5 Crypto Billionaires
As indicated by the Hurun Global Rich List, there are 5 cryptocurrency billionaires, and Micree Zhan Ketuan tops among all.
Micree Zhan Ketuan (Bitmain): $2.7 Billion
The co-founder of crypto mining company ‘Bitmain,’ Micree Zhan Ketuan is the wealthiest of all crypto billionaires. He holds up to 36.58% of the company’s shares. While Zhan Ketuan is in charge of the technical aspects of Bitmain’s overall business, Wu Jihan, another co-founder of the company, takes care of the PR and other aspects of the company.
Two of the largest mining pools of the world, BTC.com and Antpool, are operated by Bitmain. Also, the company is the world’s largest supplier of BTC, 0.55% mining equipment.
Chris Larsen (Ripple): $1.6 Billion
The co-founder of Ripple, Chris Larsen possesses a huge stake amount of XRP, 0.67%. He owns about 5.2 billion XRP, which is worth $1.6 billion at the time of writing. Larsen, on top of his XRP holdings, owns a 17% share in Ripple, which is valued at $410 million.
Wu Jihan (Bitmain): $1.5 Billion
Wu Jihan is Micree Zhan Ketuan’s partner at Bitmain. Jihan owns 20.5% of the shares. As mentioned above, he takes care of the PR and other aspects of the company.
Though both of the co-founders of Bitmain made it to the billionaire list of Hurun, yet the company itself has been struggling lately. In the 3rd quarter of 2018, the company reported a loss of $500 million as declining crypto mining has made mining a much less attractive proposition.
Brian Armstrong (Coinbase): $1.3 Billion
Brian Armstrong is the co-founder of one of the leading cryptocurrency exchange – Coinbase. This is the platform that has over 20 million users and has valued itself at $8 billion after completing the last fundraising round. As soon as the investment round was completed, Armstrong became a billionaire immediately.
Changpeng Zhao (Binance): $1.3 Billion
Changpeng Zhao is the founder of one of the leading cryptocurrency exchange – Binance. He managed to raise over $15 million of startup capital with an ICO in just a few weeks. The crypto exchange grew by leaps & bounds and has been considered as the biggest crypto exchange in the world starting with 2018.
However, he got involved with Bitcoin much earlier. In 2014, Zhao sold his house and went all-in on Bitcoin. Before he made any profit, he lost more than half of his money. But he decided to hold on to his Bitcoin, which proved to be a move that ultimately paid off big time.
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