Bitcoin boom minted nine new cryptocurrency billionaires in one year

NEW DELHI: From the 40% plunge in a day to below $5,000 on 11 March 2020, Bitcoin has come a long way to hit its all-time high of $61,711.87 on 13 March this year.

As many as 12 cryptocurrency billionaires made it to the Forbes’ 35th Annual World’s Billionaires List, up from just four last year.

The twins are early investors of bitcoin, having started in 2012.

Moreover, Saylor’s firm, MicroStrategy, holds 91,579 bitcoins that were acquired at an aggregate purchase price of $2.226 billion and an average purchase price of around $24,311 per bitcoin, inclusive of fees and expenses.

According to Forbes, Draper, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, in 2014 bought $18.7 million worth of bitcoin that had been confiscated by US Marshals from the shuttered Silk Road black market.

Fried, who came in at the 274th spot as the richest individual in the world, is crypto’s wealthiest billionaire with a net worth of $8.7 billion.

Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of exchange Coinbase, is the second wealthiest crypto billionaire with assets worth $6.5 billion.

Changpeng Zhao, founder, Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange in terms of volume, has assets worth $1.9 billion.

Barry Silbert was next with a net worth of $1.6 billion.

Among the coin issuers, Ripple’s co-founders Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb had total assets worth $3.4 billion and $2 billion, respectively.

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