From the rubble and ruins of plummeting volatile values and hard crashing losses to a serendipitous seat at the highly prestigious annual Forbes triple comma summit, here are a dozen of the bravest, finest and luckiest cryptocurrency enthusiasts recently inducted into the global league of dollar billionaires.
Approximately a year ago, as the world quaked under the fatal blow of the pandemic, the crypto market took some of the hardest-hit pushing the trailblazing cryptocurrency – Bitcoin (BTC), over the cliff in a historic 40% value tank, grovelling the market price to a rock-bottom $5,000 per BTC in a space of fewer than 24 hours. 12 months and one windfall later, Bitcoin picked up the ashes and peaked to a record-setting high of $61,711.87 rewarding faithful believers with over 800% value rebound and launching nine new cryptocurrency billionaires into the 35th Annual Forbes Billionaires List for 2021.
Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss top the list of investment newcomers with a net worth of approximately $3billion each. The ex-Olympic boat-rowing twin brothers, who struck a goldmine in a historic Facebook lawsuit, began gathering Bitcoins from as far back as 2012. Today, they co-own a newly set up digital currency transaction and exchange platform known as Gemini.
Next up is Michael Saylor at $2.3billion. The MicroStrategy software company owner once wrecked a ton of fortune in the early tides of www-dot-com hype. Fortunately, Saylor was able to scoop a ton of Bitcoin right before boom time, ultimately soaring his fortunes and that of his company into the billionaires club.
Matthew Roszak follows through with a $1.5billion fat stack as a reward for sticking through Bitcoin’s thick and thin since 2011. Roszak now seeks to find and sow into other new crypto start-ups and has gone on to establish Bloq - a platform for facilitating the construction of blockchains.
There’s also Tim Draper, now valued at $1.5billion, who cashed in on the purchase of confiscated black market bitcoin to the tune of $18.7million.
Sam Bankman-Fried with a whopping $8.7billion asset worth, stands as the wealthiest cryptocurrency billionaire. As the founder of the popular FTX exchange platform, he remains one of the biggest players in the infrastructure industry alongside Brian Armstrong – Coinbase transaction and exchange company co-founder with a total asset valued at $6.5billion, up 650% from last year.
Other services and infrastructure providing billionaires in this year’s list are Fred Ehrsam, valued at $1.9billion who equally co-established Coinbase with Armstrong; Changpeng Zhao whose 30% stake in the popular exchange platform – Binance – has returned the former billionaire to a current net worth of $1.9billion and Barry Silbert, valued at $1.6billion from his cryptocurrency portfolio group called Digital Currency Group (DCG).
Only two coin issuers – the duo of Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb, co-founders of the highly successful crypto coin Ripple (XRP) valued at $3.4 and $2billion respectively – made it to the list with McCaleb entering for the first time.
A quick analysis of the distribution of these billionaires across the global cryptocurrency sector shows five of them as early investors who have held their assets for close to eight years or bought large volumes right before a pump, another five that earned their fortune from setting up and providing infrastructures to facilitate effective exchange and the last two who are one of the few popular and denominated founders and issuers of one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency since 2020. This gives a grand idea of the sectors with the highest growth prospects and could be beneficial to future investors seeking to make a quick fortune multiplication or build wealth over time with cryptocurrency.