According to Bloomberg, when former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange collapsed, other crypto billionaires immediately tried to prove themselves unrelated to FTX and their net worth was not hit hard like Sam.
Twin brothers Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. Following the crash of FTX, Cameron posted a series of tweets on his personal page emphasizing that Gemini “has no exposure to FTT or Alameda tokens, nor to FTX.”
Coinbase Global Inc CEO Brian Armstrong also cited a Washington Post article from 2018 that claimed his company was “one of the most trusted and legitimate companies.” Contrary to what happens at FTX.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, said that the company planned to set up a crypto recovery fund to help industry players facing a liquidity crunch.
Sam’s fortune drops more than 90% after the crash of FTX
According to Bloomberg, in the period 2020-2021, the top billionaires in crypto have seen their fortunes increase rapidly as individuals and institutions flock to invest in this field.
Binance boss Zhao was on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index’s list of the world’s richest people in January with a fortune of $96 billion. Thanks to cryptocurrency, he has been able to stand on a par with other famous tech billionaires in the world.
However, everything changed in 2022 when the prices of the world’s two largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ether, fell 64% and 66% respectively since the beginning of the year.
This happened because one of the biggest stablecoins, TerraUSD, collapsed and two well-known hedge funds, Three Arrows Capital and Celsius, struggled.
The crash of FTX has also spurred money out of crypto exchanges. In about 7 days after the crash, users everywhere withdrew $3.7 billion worth of Bitcoin and $2.5 billion worth of Ether.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the market turmoil has caused the total wealth of crypto billionaires to drop by more than $96 billion.
A series of crashes since the beginning of the year have caused the fortunes of leading crypto billionaires such as Changpeng Zhao, Brian Armstrong, the Winklevoss twins and others.
“Right now, the market is going down,” said Mike McGlone, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. He expects the crypto market to recover, but is uncertain about when.
Currently, Changpeng Zhao’s estimated net worth is $16.9 billion after seeing a decline of $78.9 billion this year. In Bloomberg’s list, Zhao is third behind Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms Inc. and Elon Musk of Tesla Inc.
Meanwhile, the Winklevoss twins have seen almost half of their net worth wiped out. Each currently holds a net worth of $3 billion.
The net worth of Armstrong and co-founder Fred Ehrsam has also dropped 78% and 43% respectively since the start of the year. As for Novogratz, he has lost 64% of his net worth this year and now holds a net worth of only $1.8 billion.
Source: Bloomberg
Source: Vietnam Insider