The chief executive officer of the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, Coinbase, is No. 1 on the list of the world’s industry billionaires by China’s Hurun Research Institute.
The latest Hurun report provides a quick look at the world’s wealthiest, showing that the number of global billionaires has increased by almost half to include more than 3,000 people over the last half-decade.
The total wealth of Coinbase top honcho Brian Armstrong is estimated at between $7 billion and $15 billion based on the recent sale of private shares that gave Coinbase a value of around $100 billion, a Bloomberg report shows.
No. 1 on Hurun’s list of rich people
Based on the Hurun report, Armstrong is the world’s biggest digital currency billionaire, with his net value soaring ten-fold from $1 billion in 2020.
Armstrong currently has an estimated fortune of $12 billion ahead of the crypto exchange’s much-anticipated initial public offering (IPO), as shown in the Hurun report.
Coinbase has officially disclosed its IPO plans in December 2020 in a draft document with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Hurun report includes 17 “blockchain billionaires,” or industry entrepreneurs who earned their wealth “primarily from cryptocurrency” as of January this year.
The world’s richest crypto billionaires
Armstrong has also amassed nearly $60 million in salary last year, overtaking JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon ($32 million) and Apple chief executive Tim Cook ($15 million).
In second place of Hurun’s richest blockchain billionaires is Alameda Research and FTX exchange founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, with a net value estimated at $10 billion. Bankman-Fried is a new inclusion in the list after his company’s massive growth last year.
On the third spot is Changpeng Zhao, chief executive of Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange. Zhao is estimated to be worth $8 billion. He was the richest crypto billionaire in the Hurun list last year, surpassing Bitmain’s co-founder Micree Zhan Ketuan.
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