The crash of cryptocurrencies over the past year is painful for many private investors. But the crypto crash has inflicted heavy losses on billionaires like FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong. The head of the largest crypto exchange has been the hardest hit. DER AKTIONÄR shows the biggest losers from the crypto crash.
2022 has definitely not been a good year for the crypto industry. Most cryptocurrencies have been falling for months. For example, the price of Bitcoin has lost around 60% of its value since the start of the year and currently sits near US$17,000.
In percentage terms, it looks similar for Ethereum in a year-over-year comparison. The second largest cryptocurrency is hovering at a healthy $1,200 on Tuesday after a yearly high of $3,750.
Bitcoin
(ISIN code: CRYPT0000BTC)
The decline in Digi-Coins intensified further in November with the bankruptcy of the world’s fourth largest crypto exchange, FTX. It also turned out that the company had embezzled billions of dollars in customer funds and could not provide any reliable financial information.
The company’s CEO and founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested in the Bahamas on December 12 and is being held by police pending extradition to the United States.
Before the crypto market collapse, Bankman-Fried was one of the richest blockchain billionaires in the world. Only the founder of what is now the largest crypto exchange, Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has made even more money from crypto.
The loss of the two general managers is proportionally high. The crypto crash cleared according to the South China Morning Post a whopping $82 billion of the Binance CEO’s fortune in early December. Bankman-Fried lost about $23 billion. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is about $4.7 billion in debt, while the fortunes of Gary Wang (FTX) and Chris Larsen (Ripple) are down $1.7 billion and 1 .3 billion, respectively.
Statista.com
The Biggest Crypto Crash Losers Since Early 2022
Nevertheless, very few crypto billionaires have to worry about their standard of living. Only for Sam Bankman-Fried is the outlook bleak.
DER AKTIONÄR believes the cryptocurrency market will recover. However, this would probably require full regulation beforehand. There will likely be pressure to sell again and again until there is a lasting trend reversal. Private investors must therefore either consider a very long-term investment or stay away.