According to a report by Henley & Partners, a professional consultancy firm, there are 22 people who have crypto holdings worth at least $1 billion as of September 2023. Six of them hold their investments in Bitcoin, the first and largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Six Bitcoin billionaires reported net worth
- Micree Zhan, the co-founder of Bitmain, a leading manufacturer of Bitcoin mining hardware. He has a reported net worth of $3.2 billion as of January 2021.
- Chris Larsen, the co-founder and executive chairman of Ripple, a blockchain platform that facilitates cross-border payments. He has a reported net worth of $2.9 billion as of January 2021.
- Michael Saylor, the founder and CEO of MicroStrategy, a business intelligence company that has invested over $1 billion in Bitcoin since 2020. He has a reported net worth of $2.3 billion as of January 2021.
- Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. He has a reported net worth of $1.9 billion as of January 2021.
- Tim Draper, a venture capitalist and early investor in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He has a reported net worth of $1.5 billion as of January 2021.
- Brian Armstrong, the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S. He has a reported net worth of $1.3 billion as of January 2021.
Satoshi Nakamoto
There are also likely to be some anonymous Bitcoin billionaires who have not disclosed their identities or holdings to the public.
One of them could be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious ‘likely’ creator of Bitcoin, who is estimated to have mined over one million Bitcoins in the early days of the network.
If he still owns them, his fortune would be worth over $40 billion at current prices. However, there is no conclusive evidence that he is still alive or in control of his bitcoins, or even that he was the originator of Bitcoin.