Rich list names the world’s wealthiest Bitcoin billionaire

The Hurun Global Rich List released today includes six cryptocurrency billionaires, adding two new faces from major crypto exchanges this year.

According to the list, four people out of the six executives who made it onto the list are from major cryptocurrency exchanges, holding a net worth of more than $1 billion each.

Changpeng Zhao, the 42-year-old founder of the three-year-old crypto exchange Binance, has continued to grow his personal wealth as the company expands. Zhao has doubled his wealth to a reported $2.6 billion, up from last year’s $1.3 billion. He now tops global crypto entrepreneurs.

The second wealthiest crypto individual is Bitmain co-founder Zhan Ketuan, according to the list. The 41-year-old mastermind behind the world’s largest crypto mining hardware manufacturer holds a net worth of $1.6 billion as of January 31, 2020, which in fact has decreased by 41% from $2.7 billion a year ago, the report shows.

Notably, Zhan was the richest crypto individual on last year’s Hurun rich list while Bitmain’s other co-founder, Jihan Wu, came third. Wu was not seen on this year’s list, which may be a result of the huge upheaval within the company’s upper hierarchy that broke out last October.

The rapid rise of the crypto sector along with the skyrocketing prices of cryptocurrencies in the past few years has seen entrepreneurs from the industry make billions out of the burgeoning industry.
Apart from Zhao, founders of other crypto exchanges have also made it to the list, including OKEx/OKCoin’s Xu Mingxing ($1.4 billion) and Huobi’s Li Lin ($1.1 billion) who were added onto the list this year, followed by Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong ($1 billion).

The Hurun Global Rich List, known as China’s version of the Forbes rich list, ranked 2,816 billionaires from 71 countries this year. On top is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has remained on top for the third consecutive year with a fortune of $140 billion.

Luxury giant LVMH’s CEO Bernard Arnault ($107 billion) moves up two places to be the second-richest person in the world while Bill Gates ($106 billion) is in third place. Warren Buffett ($102 billion) follows behind him—and that’s without owning any Bitcoin.

[This story was originally published in 8BTC.com, and is shared by arrangement with that site. It has been edited to conform with Decrypt's style.]