Blockchain has changed the way people value money and allows us to look at the amount of assets in other people's wallets. Any crypto enthusiast can now research how many cryptocurrencies billionaires hold directly on the blockchain, instead of having to rely on related statistical tools.
The reality is, there is no shortage of billionaires on the blockchain, but most of them are anonymous and only have public wallet addresses. However, there are also some large individuals who have revealed their wallet addresses.
Co-founder of Ethereum – Vitalik Buterin
In 2021, Vitalik Buterin was named the world's youngest crypto billionaire by Forbes as the price of Ethereum (ETH) hit $3,000. On-chain data cannot confirm Vitalik's title of “youngest crypto billionaire,” but it can still confirm the accuracy of the asset data.
According to Arkham Intelligence, in May 2021 Vitalik's crypto asset portfolio was estimated to be worth about $2 billion, of which ETH accounted for about half. However, as the price of Dogecoin rose sharply, the value of Vitalik's assets increased significantly.
Dogecoin fans and issuers transferred large amounts of Dogecoin to Vitalik's Ethereum address. This can be considered a form of "offensive" marketing, pretending that Vitalik is "supporting" Dogecoin and creating the impression that he has faith in this non-traditional cryptocurrency. This has led observers on the blockchain to believe that Vitalik Buterin is indeed backing the cryptocurrency.
During the last bull market, Vitalik Buterin targeted memecoins. On May 12, 2021, Vitalik's cryptocurrency portfolio was estimated to be worth more than $20.5 billion, putting him alongside figures like Bridgewater's Ray Dalio and Google's Eric Schmidt.
Among Vitalik's assets, Shiba Inu (SHIB) accounts for the largest proportion with a value of about 17.8 billion USD (87%), but there are also many other "fake dogecoins" such as AKITA and HUSKY. However, SHIB's value subsequently dropped significantly, and Vitalik donated the remainder of SHIB to India's COVID-19 relief fund.
Currently, Vitalik is holding about 484 million USD in cryptocurrency at public addresses, of which the majority is ETH. Over the years, Vitalik has sent approximately $74 million in digital assets to cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken.
Ripple Co-Founder – Jed McCaleb
Jed McCaleb has sold billions of XRP over the past decade. As of last year, Ripple Labs had transferred a steady amount of XRP to Jed McCaleb's famous “tacostand” address, which he then sold on the open market.
Initially, Ripple was concerned that Jed McCaleb would quickly sell his portion like the other founder, for a total of 9 billion XRP (equivalent to $54 million in 2016 and $4.2 billion currently).
It is known that the agreements put in place have strict regulations on the amount of XRP that Jed McCaleb can receive annually, starting from 10,000 USD per week in 2015 and ending with 2 billion XRP per year after 2020 (worth price 844 million USD).
Jed McCaleb's “tacostand” address no longer holds XRP and made its last transfer in mid-2022, ending an eight-year XRP sell-off streak.
According to Whale Alert estimates, Jed McCaleb has sold 5.7 billion XRP over the past eight years, earning a total profit of about $3.1 billion. Research firms have found that Jed McCaleb has been selling XRP for an average price of $0.55, about 19% higher than the current price. Forbes estimates Jed McCaleb's net worth at $2.4 billion after he founded the Stellar blockchain network.
Justin Sun – founder of TRON
In September 2021, statistics showed that Justin Sun was holding a total of 6.3 billion USD in cryptocurrency in his investment portfolio. This amount of assets has put Justin Sun on the list of 500 richest billionaires in the world, along with figures such as the founder of the sportswear brand Lululemon - Chip Wilson and the founder of a famous hedge fund in the US - Andreas. Halvorsen. The increase in Justin Sun's asset portfolio is a clear testament to his success in the cryptocurrency market.
About 95% of Justin's portfolio is locked in the Aave and Curve lending protocols, where he achieves high yields. These investments include 2.63 billion USDC, 478,250 WETH (worth $1.86 billion), and 11,000 BTC (worth $545 million).
Justin Sun has committed to staking his ETH on the Lido platform.
Currently, Justin Sun's cryptocurrency investment portfolio is known to be worth up to 858 million USD. Of which, 303,660 ETH (STETH) were placed on the Lido platform, equivalent to 580 million USD. Next is the USD stablecoin worth $160 million. Justin Sun also holds 23,724 ETH (worth $46.76 million) and 6,802 MKR (worth $4.97 million).
Justin Sun is known as a businessman with a strong financial mindset. Over the years, he sent a total of $22.6 billion in cryptocurrencies to exchanges, of which more than half went to the Binance exchange.
Satoshi Nakamoto and other anonymous Bitcoin billionaires
Bitcoin's mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, is said to have mined between 600,000 and 1.1 million bitcoins in the early days, valued at between $16.75 billion and $30.7 billion. These bitcoins are dispersed across hundreds of addresses, making tracking them difficult. If this estimate is correct, Nakamoto would be among the world's top 50 billionaires, second only to Chanel chairman Alain Wertheimer.
Another notable online address is “1 Feex“, which held nearly 80,000 bitcoins (about 2.25 billion USD) as of March 2011. This address was previously controlled by Ross Ulbricht, who is involved in the darknet market “Silk Road”.
Craig Wright, who calls himself Satoshi Nakamoto, has also claimed to own online addresses related to the Silk Road hack. However, this claim has been questioned by the community. Craig Wright also failed to claim ownership of bitcoins stolen from Silk Road in a lawsuit last year.
Currently, there are fewer than 10 addresses holding $1 billion or more worth of bitcoin (not counting other major cryptocurrency exchanges or investment funds). According to Etherscan, there are currently no “anonymous” Ethereum addresses holding $1 billion or more worth of ETH.
Coinbase CEO and other crypto billionaires
It can be mentioned that Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, is known to hold about 590,000 USD in crypto assets at known addresses, mostly ETH. Forbes estimates Brian Armstrong's current net worth at $2.5 billion. Or Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and cryptocurrency advocate, owns $4 million worth of crypto assets. Of which, more than half is USDC, followed by STETH and wETH.
There are many other crypto billionaires and wealthy but secretive elites holding other unidentified cryptocurrencies. However, we do not have enough on-chain evidence to verify this.
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