The 5 richest billionaires thanks to cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies, from decline to success

At the beginning of the pandemic, the cryptocurrency market appeared to be collapsing and showing fragility, after many large investors withdrew their money from cryptocurrencies to take them to “safe” havens such as Treasuries, causing currencies like Bitcoin to lose up to half their value in a few days, the same happened with other recognized cryptocurrencies that saw their prices fall due to the uncertainty of the pandemic, according to El Periódico.

However, this crisis did not have a prolonged impact, since important companies such as Tesla and Square began to invest their assets in Bitcoin, in the same way, the cryptocurrency market expanded with new institutions joining this medium after banks decreased their interests, so companies turned to cryptocurrency to protect their money and avoid a potential currency devaluation, in turn, this has encouraged the use of cryptocurrencies, which are increasingly accepted as a form of payment, according to the BBC. . An example of this appreciation was Bitcoin, which went from costing $ 5,112 on March 13, 2020, to having a historic price of $ 60,000 a year later.

This increase in the prices and use of cryptocurrencies has also caused some people to become new billionaires, these are the top 5.

5. Michael Saylor

With 53 years, Saylor was a billionaire already in the 90s thanks to his company MicroStrategy, dedicated to business software for analysis and databases, however, Saylor had left the Forbes list for many years until 2021, where he entered again due to his investments in Bitcoin, coming to personally buy 17,732 when the value of this currency did not reach 10 thousand dollars, however through MicroStrategy he allocated 1.1 billion dollars for the purchase of 70,784 Bitcoin. Saylor's current fortune is $ 2.3 billion.

4. Winklevoss Brothers

Cameron and Tyler are not only twin brothers but also run the same business, one as President and the other CEO of Gemini, a platform for cryptocurrency transactions that they founded themselves. The Winklevoss are known as the first Bitcoin millionaires after a lawsuit against Facebook received 65 million dollars in compensation in 2011, two years later they would invest 11 of those million in Bitcoin, seeing its boom and security, the twins ended up buying 1% of the Bitcoin in circulation when it was worth $ 120, according to the BBC. Now each has a fortune of $ 3 billion.

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3. Chris Larsen

In 2012, Larsen co-founded Ripple -now called XRP- a cryptocurrency that works as an exchange system in international banking transactions, with the advantage of making transfers effective in seconds, among its more than 100 clients Ripple has American Express and Santander since that is dedicated to the banking sector. Larsen's fortune is currently $ 3.4 billion.

2. Brian Armstrong

Current CEO and co-founder of Coinbase, the most widely used cryptocurrency transaction platform in the United States that grows rapidly due to the increase in demand for cryptocurrencies, only the first quarter of 2021 Coinbase reported 1.8 billion dollars in revenue, a sum greater than the entire entry in 2020 (1,100 million dollars), in addition to having 223 billion dollars in assets, most of it coming from companies according to Xataka. Armstrong's current fortune is $ 6.5 billion, and it could rise soon when Coinbase hits the US stock market, which is scheduled to be the first half of 2021.

1. Sam Bankman-Fried

At only 29 years old, the American residing in Hong Kong already has a fortune of 8.7 billion dollars, the wealthiest of cryptocurrencies. Bankman is the founder of Alameda Research, a company that manages assets of other companies through cryptocurrencies, he also created FTX, a digital exchange for cryptocurrencies. Bankman's first fortune through cryptocurrencies was in 2018 when he took advantage of the price difference of Bitcoin in Japan, where the currency had 10% more value compared to the United States, so together with Alameda Research, he dedicated himself to move 25 million dollars a day, according to declared to NY Mag.