The Richest Billionaires in Crypto Revealed: Global Rich List 2020

The Hurun Global Rich List 2020 ranking the US-Dollar billionaires in the world is out, and includes the richest people in the billionaires club from the crypto and blockchain space.

The world added another 356 billionaires to take the total record of world billionaires to a record 2, 816 globally. 

 

SEE ALSO: Bitcoin was the Best Investment of the Decade, Says Bank of America Securities Report

The crypto space has contributed its fair share to the world of billionaires and below is the list of billionaires and the companies they run:

• Changpeng Zhao (CZ), CEO, Binance: $2.6 billion 

Binance runs various crypto exchanges in different jurisdictions and also operates the Binance Chain blockchain platform in addition to other blockchain products and services. Binance is the largest crypto exchange by volume as of 2020

• Micree Zhan Ketuan, Co-Founder, Bitmain: $1.6 billion

Bitmain is the biggest player in the cryptocurrency mining industry, selling purpose-made cryptocurrency mining equipment known as ASICs. It also operates some of the biggest cryptocurrency mining pools in the world

• Xu Mingxing, Founder & CEO, OKCoin (OKEx):  $1.4 billion

OkCoin operates OKEx, which is one of the leading exchanges in the cryptocurrency industry. While the exchange and founder are not very well known in the Western world, the exchange is quite popular in the Asian market

• Chris Larsen, Executive Chairman, Ripple Labs (XRP): $1.3 billion

US-based fintech Ripple Labs has managed to attract over 300 banks and payments providers to its RippleNet network. The company has created “On-Demand Liquidity”, a product that uses the XRP cryptocurrency to boost the efficiency of cross-border payments

• Leon Li, Founder, Huobi: $1.1 billion

Huobi is one of the biggest exchange players in the crypto industry, particularly in Asia. Under development, the Huobi blockchain platform will be primarily geared towards applications in the finance industry

• Brian Armstrong, Co-founder & CEO, Coinbase: $1 billion

CoinBase is the go-to fiat-to-crypto gateway for the Western market. Coinbase commands considerable influence in the industry and offers a range of services including trading, institutional-grade cryptocurrency custody, OTC trading for institutional clients and a crypto payments processor for merchants

From the above list, it is easy to notice a few details:

• 4 out of the 6 billionaires run crypto exchanges
• Xu Mingxing, founder, OkCoin, at 35, is listed among the youngest billionaires globally
• Except for Binance, all companies were set up early in the space before 2014
• 4 out of the 6 billionaires are Chinese
• The list is a 40% decline from 2018 when crypto had 10 people in the Billionaires Club
• Most of the wealth is made up of cryptoasset holdings which continue to rise YoY