Forbes reveal crypto billionaires of 2022

TL;DR Breakdown

• The crypto billionaires list released by Forbes shows seven new entrants
• Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, maintains the number one spot
• New members in the list include co-founders of OpenSea and Alchemy

Crypto billionaires have seen some new names join their ranks despite the crypto market’s turbulence. The list of crypto billionaires has increased to have 19 members, seven more than last year. 

Crypto billionaires list expands by 58% in 2022

According to the yearly list curated by Forbes, the over $2 trillion crypto market has birthed even more billionaires and seen standing members of the club rise in valuation. 

Topping the list is the CEO and founder of the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance. Changpeng Zhao, or CZ as he is often called, is estimated to have a net worth of $65 billion. For lack of public data, Forbes reached the figure by estimating Binance‘s market valuation to be $92.5 (as of last month) and CZ owning a 70% stake in the company. 

With the valuation, CZ is not only the richest crypto billionaire but the 19th richest person in the world. CZ has disclosed plans for Binance to make investments in every major industry and bring them into the crypto market. 

“We [Binance] want to identify and invest in one or two targets in every economic sector and try to bring them into crypto,” Zhao told the Financial Times this month.

Next on the list is the 30-year-old founder and CEO of the Bahamas-headquartered crypto exchange, FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF. SBF’s wealth is valued at $24 billion, and has stated that he plans to give the majority of his wealth away to charity. 

Rounding off the top three is Brian Armstrong, CEO and founder of the publicly traded crypto exchange Coinbase. Armstrong has a valuation of $6.6 billion earned from his 19% stake in Coinbase.  

Newcomers in the crypto billionaires club include Gary Wang (co-founder and CTO of FTX), Song Chi-hyung (founder of Upbit), Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau (co-founders of crypto start-up Alchemy), Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah (co-founders of OpenSea), and Kim Hyoung-nyon (executive president of South Korea’s Danumu). 

Other crypto billionaires who made the cut and were also on last year’s list include Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Micheal Saylor, Matthew Roznak, Tim Draper, Fred Ehrsam, Barry Silbert, Chris Larsen, and Jed McCaleb. 

Governments paying more attention to crypto wealth

The rapid growth of the crypto industry and the wealth it has created for market participants have caught the attention of most governments, and not just to crypto billionaires. In the US, the world’s largest economy, the government has set out to raise around $11 billion from crypto taxation. 

The proposal, which will go into force in the 2023 fiscal year, will see controversial new tax reporting requirements introduced for the crypto industry.  

The crypto space, as well as members of the US Congress, have continued to contest the wording of the Bill in which the new rules are enshrined. In a recently introduced bipartisan bill, The Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act of 2022, it was proposed that small crypto transactions should be exempted from tax reporting.