Crypto magnates join Forbes’ US billionaire ranking
This year, US Forbes esteemed ‘Forbes 400 list’ of richest Americans included seven billionaires dominating the crypto industry- six of which were newcomers.
Announced on Tuesday, the list included Ripple’s Chris Larson, who had previously been ranked, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, and more. Co-founder and chairman of Ripple, Larson saw his net worth more than doubled the previous year despite Ripple’s ongoing lawsuit with the US SEC
The combined net worth of the seven billionaires is an astounding $55.1 billion, out of which $22.5 billion belongs to Sam Bankman Fried.
Sam Bankman-Fried is the 29-year-old CEO of cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX. He founded the exchange in 2019 after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a degree in physics.
FTX is currently one of the largest crypto exchanges with daily trading volumes averaging at $ 13.8 billion. The company raised $ 900 million in Series B funding in July, taking its corporate value to an estimated $18 billion.
The funding, which saw participation from SoftBank Group, Coinbase, VanEck, Circle, Paul Tudor Jones family, and others, has almost doubled Sam’s fortune. His assets primarily comprise in the form of FTX shares and the exchange token “FTT”.
Talking about Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, the co-founder of the largest US crypto exchange has a net worth of $11.5 billion and owns around 19% of Coinbase shares.
Next on the list comes Winkle Boss Brothers, who are co-founders of the crypto exchange Gemini. Each has a net worth of $4.3 billion and has investments in other blockchain companies such as BlockFi, a major cryptocurrency lending company, and Nifty Gateway, a digital art platform.
Fred Easam is the other co-founder of Coinbase with an estimated net worth of $3 billion. He left the company in 2017 and later became the co-founder of Paradigm, a venture capital firm focused on cryptocurrencies.
Lastly, with a net worth of $3 billion, Jaleb Macaleb is the co-founder of the Stellar Foundation who has previously contributed to the development of Ripple and the first major bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox.
The post Crypto magnates join Forbes’ US billionaire ranking appeared first on Our Bitcoin News.
OhNoCryptocurrency via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @Gauri Bhatia, @Khareem Sudlow