For over 10+ years now, Bitcoin has been the world’s greatest wealth generating technology.
No other tech stock, not even spectacular performers like Tesla and Apple, go anywhere near Bitcoin’s yields during the past decade.
In this post we visit the elite of the elite of Bitcoin entrepreneurs and investors : the billion dollar club. Although there are tens of BTC millionaires, only a few luminaries made it to the most exclusive club.
Here’s the brief story of the world’s Bitcoin billionaires.
Changpeng Zhao (CZ Binance)
Affectionately known by his initials, CZ is probably one of the most popular crypto personalities today.
In 2017 the main cryptocurrency exchanges were Poloniex, Bitfinex and a handful of others. The famous 2017 bull market would have a surprise in store for all the established exchanges: a young man who went just by his initials was to leave the OKCoin project to start his own exchange.
Binance rose through the playing field straight to #1 in a matter of a little more than a year, leaving behind giants like Bitfinex, Bittrex, Kraken, Poloniex and several others.
Despite his success, CZ is a very accessible social media personality, often engaging with anonymous followers in casual conversations.
CZ Binance’s net worth: U$ 1.4 billion
Chris Larsen
E-Loan found Chris Larsen combined two of his greatest passions, finance and technology, into one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrencies: Ripple (XRP).
Ripple has been among the top 5 cryptocurrencies for the better part of the last 3 years and promises to revolutionize inter-banking protocols.
Ripple is different from its contemporary cryptos, because it’s designed to be a protocol, not just a cryptocurrency. In the future, banks could use Ripple for transfers, settlements and other financial transactions.
Chris Larsen’s estimated net worth: U$ 4.6 billion
Joseph Lubin
Joseph Lubin is one of the founders of the Ethereum platform.
Lubin also runs ConsenSys, a cryptocurrency venture capital firm with many successful projects.
Joseph Lubin’s net worth: U$ 1 billion
Zhan Ketuan (Micree Zhan)
In the beginning, you could simply run Bitcoin Core and coins would magically appear on your balance.
Bitcoin mining was a matter of running Bitcoin Core on any common PC computer.
Soon this would change, though. Hackers found out how to mine BTC using graphics cards. This rendered CPU mining obsolete. But Zhan Ketuan was working on the ultimate mining weapon : ASICs.
Ketuan founded the Bitmain Bitcoin mining equipment manufacturer in Beijing. Currently, no other mining hardware manufacturer makes faster mining machines.
Ketuan’s estimated net worth : U$ 5.5 billion
Brian Armstrong
In 2012 most Bitcoin trading happened over the counter (OTC). It was the stone age in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin was largely seen as toy money.
But Brian Armstrong saw beyond the “magic Internet money” hype and came up with a plan for a serious Bitcoin trading business. A US-based exchange to offer everyone access to cryptocurrency.
Armstrong founded Coinbase in 2012 and received U$ 25 million in funding approximately one year later.
Fast forward to 2020, Coinbase is the US’ #1 Bitcoin exchange and is often responsible for the world’s biggest daily volume of US dollar (not stablecoin) activity.
Brian Armstrong estimated net worth: U$ 1 billion
Tim Draper
Tim Draper is an exception in the Bitcoin billion dollar club – he’s the only Bitcoin billionaire who did not build his fortune from Bitcoin.
In 2014, the US Government auctioned 30,000 BTC that were seized from illegla operations. Tim Draper placed the winning bid at U$ 19 million for the entire lot, pricing each BTC at U$ 633. His investment has since multiplied by approximately 20x.
In that same year, Draper correctly predicted Bitcoin at U$ 10,000 within 3 years. In 2017 BTC price not only reached 10k, it went 2x as high, briefly touching U$ 20,000 before giving up the gains.
Tim Draper estimated net worth: U$ 1 billion
The Anonymous Billionaires
Bitcoin allows you to maintain relative anonymity if you choose to not expose yourself. (See next section about Bitcoin’s own creator.)
Currently, a few anonymous Bitcoin addresses hold more than U$ 1 billion worth of BTC.
Though we don’t know their identities, we do know that their net worth ranges from U$ 1.038 billion to U$ 2.86 billion.
See the complete list of wealthiest Bitcoin addresses.
Satoshi Nakamoto
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Bitcoin creator himself is a member of the elite billion dollar club. The guy who created the technology which drove every other billionaire on this post to the top.
Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin to the world in a 2008 whitepaper titled “A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System”. In just 9 pages, Nakamoto would revolutionize finance forever. He had invented the Internet of money.
The first version of Bitcoin ran on Microsoft Windows only. It was a very small program which included a full node and a wallet interface. This simple program magically generated coins when you left it running! Satoshi’s own early experiments using this early version of Bitcoin Core generated over 1 million Bitcoin.
Satoshi Nakamoto net worth: 1 million Bitcoin (~U$ 11 billion at publication time)
Bitcoin Million Club
The cryptocurrency millionaire club is, obviously, much larger than the elite billion dollar club.
The million club includes some of the most visible names in crypto such as John McAfee, Roger Ver, Craig Wright, Brock Pierce, Charles Hoskinson, Vitalik Buterin, the Winklevoss Twins and many others.
It’s speculated that Brock Pierce may have been worth over U$ 1 billion in early 2018.
The Winklevoss twins, currently worth ~ U$ 600 million combined, were worth over U$ 1 billion in late 2017 / early 2018 as well.
One thing all the wealthiest crypto personalities have in common is how early they joined the crypto movement. Most Bitcoin millionaires and billionaires joined crypto in the first wave, between 2009 and 2014. Their wealth multiplied several times over during the 2017 bonanza.
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Featured photos : Collage from Wikimedia Commons